


haec olim

by GollumPanties



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Infidelity, M/M, Never again, That One Fic That Will Haunt Me, pretentious metaphors, the only time i will ever write sex, the popsicles are probably a metaphor for how much they want to bone, the sky is a metaphor for relationship problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:50:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GollumPanties/pseuds/GollumPanties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sky Sehun is painting is almost blue.</p>
<p>Originally written for the 2013 <a href="http://runandgun.livejournal.com/">runandgun</a> round <a href="http://runandgun.livejournal.com/47870.html">here</a>, <a href="http://runandgun.livejournal.com/47407.html">here</a>, and <a href="http://runandgun.livejournal.com/47407.html">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	haec olim

When he was at school, Kyungsoo used to make little boxes that played with light. Sehun would paint those boxes; he would look through the cutout window to paint sunlight on ridged cardboard. Now Kyungsoo makes buildings that play with light and Sehun still paints, but he also waits tables in the evening after all the light is gone because he has bills to pay.

The forecasters have all said they are in for a rainy summer, and Sehun decides then that maybe the universe is trying to tell him to start the new project he's been considering. When he tells Kyungsoo about his idea over dinner, he gets raised eyebrows and an "oh" of interest.

"The life cycle of a storm?" Kyungsoo asks, looking intrigued.

"You know how storms change, right? It feels different right before it rains than it does right after," Sehun tries not to sound too excited. "I thought it'd be cool to try and paint that."

"Mm," Kyungsoo hums, nodding, "But what if it's just gray and wet instead of storming? It's kind of a gamble, getting the right conditions, isn't it?"

Sehun gives a sort of one-shoulder shrug.

"I want to try something different," he says. "Buildings aren't hard to pin down, but no storm stays the same for more than two seconds. They're almost-"

"-alive," Kyungsoo finishes. "I get it. I think it's a good idea."

"Really?" 

Sehun brightens and smiles. He knows he doesn't need Kyungsoo's approval for anything he paints; it's just nice to know when an idea only sounds good inside his own head and when it might actually fly.

"Of course I do. It'll improve your painting to try something new. When have I ever not liked one of your projects? I think they're all great."

Sehun rolls his eyes. "I'm pretty sure that's just because you're supposed to like everything I do."

"Hm. I also think you have sauce on your face."

Kyungsoo sets down his chopsticks. He swipes at Sehun's cheek with his thumb, but Sehun sticks his tongue out to lick at the incoming finger instead. 

"You're gross," Kyungsoo wrinkles his nose.

"Shut up. You love my tongue."

Kyungsoo looks demurely down at his plate. 

Later, when Sehun is on his knees with his mouth around his cock, licking teasing circles around the head, Kyungsoo will admit that he _very much_ likes Sehun's tongue. For now, he simply makes another pass at the sauce on Sehun's face with his thumb.

 

Kyungsoo had been Sehun's first in all the ways that mattered.

Sehun had always been drawn to bright colors and had been interested in painting because he loved the way colors played and mixed and complemented each other. He liked the bright plastic colors and blocky shapes that acrylic paints could create. It was Kyungsoo, who was at school to learn how to make buildings out of glass and steel, who showed him the ways simple white light or the faintest yellow of a sunbeam through a perfectly placed window could draw the eye just as powerfully as a riotous bed of flowers, and Sehun found himself following Kyungsoo on all of his architecture study outings just to hear him talk. When they visited an old church, Sehun was immediately drawn to the shapes of color the stained glass threw on the floor and the edges of the pews. Then he listened to Kyungsoo explain how the entire building's structure was designed to catch the light and send it reflecting and moving around the room, so that the open hall could be lit up with only the sunlight from the high windows, and Sehun found himself paying just as much attention to the light in Kyungsoo's eyes as the light on the marble floor.

Kyungsoo kissed him for the first time when Sehun showed him his semester final project: painting after painting of white and yellow sunlight on cool gray and brown cardboard. Sehun almost dropped his final A- in favor of grabbing Kyungsoo's sleeve instead, pulling him close and hanging on for dear life as Kyungsoo cupped his jaw and licked deep into his mouth. That kiss meant "thank you" and Sehun knew the feeling was mutual.

When Kyungsoo's cardboard boxes gave way to tall buildings of brick and stone and steel and glass, Sehun continued to paint the way they caught the light and reflected all the hues of a sunrise, and Kyungsoo continued to thank him in his own way. In the aftermath of the first dedication ceremony, after Sehun presented him with "501 Main Street", Kyungsoo pressed him down onto the mattress and kissed him until he was panting and so ready he was close to begging. Kyungsoo seemed about to let him take the lead, but when Sehun hesitated, Kyungsoo understood and set the careful pace himself. When Kyungsoo's hand first dipped below his waistband, Sehun knew that meant "thank you" too. Kyungsoo knew what he was doing, knew how to coax Sehun through the anxiety and nerves until he was writhing and keening high beneath him. When Kyungsoo pressed in for the first time, Sehun thought rather incoherently about negative space and painting the shadows lurking in his clavicles. Afterwards, Kyungsoo showed him the beauty in the single spectrum of one color when Sehun watched rosy dawn flush across his skin, and Sehun thought that he learned more about the play of light in each moment spent with Kyungsoo than in hours of formal instruction.

Even now, Sehun thinks that Kyungsoo is the best teacher he's ever had.

 

The day Sehun first hears Junmyeon's name, the sky he's painting is almost blue. 

The heat and humidity have been oppressive for days now, leaving Sehun uninclined to bother putting on much in the way of clothing, almost as much for Kyungsoo's reaction as it is to keep cool. His days are spent sitting in front of a fan and checking the weather on his laptop, popcicle or ice cream spoon dangling out of his mouth as he wrinkles his nose at Kyungsoo carefully buttoning up his own shirt.

"It's too hot for clothes," Sehun says, around another massive bite of Americone Dream. "Why would you wear clothes?"

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. "You're the one who told me to go for this job, you know. Maybe an occasional freelance designer can get away with lounging around the house in his boxers, but once you start working as an actual contractor, I think they start to look for something a little less 'I'm a complete slob'."

"I would never have encouraged you if I knew it meant you wearing more clothing," Sehun sniffs.

"It's so nice to know you want me for something other than my body," Kyungsoo pats him on the head and steals the spoon to grab some of his ice cream. "Are you going to paint today?"

"I think so," Sehun looks down at the screen in front of him. "They're predicting the first big storm soon, and I wanted to get something of the clouds gathering."

"Mm. Well, I've got to get going or I'm going to be late for my meeting with Junmyeon-ssi."  
Sehun cranes his neck upwards to look at Kyungsoo's upside-down face.

"Who's that?" he asks.

"My... mentor, I guess?" Kyungsoo drums his fingers thoughtfully on the back of the sofa behind Sehun's head. "He's supposed to answer any questions I have and show me around and all that. He does more of the finance and publicity side of things, but we'll probably be working together on some stuff. But he seems really nice and I don't want to keep him waiting, so I've got to head out."  
Sehun collapses sideways over the arm of the sofa to pout at Kyungsoo while he ties his shoes.

"Is he good-looking?" he demands. "Please tell me he's hideous."

"He's devastatingly gorgeous," Kyungsoo deadpans. "I'm leaving you. Put some pants on before you go out on the balcony, okay? See you later."

Sehun huffs at the door as it closes, and rolls over to stare at the ceiling for a moment before texting Kyungsoo.

_if rly cute pls take butt cam inquire as to 3somes_

Kyungsoo replies a minute later. _no. and i'm not kidding, put on pants before going outside._

Sehun replies with an _i do what i want_ , then immediately rolls off the sofa to pull on some sweatpants and grab his brushes before getting sidetracked by the rumpled blankets on the bed. It manages to capture him for an hour-long nap and he wastes another half hour after that alternatively dozing and thinking about getting up, eventually remembering that he has work that evening so his time to paint is limited. 

There's a thick line of clouds just near the tops of the surrounding buildings when he finally nudges open the sliding door with one hip — canvas under one arm, a handful of brushes in one hand, and a basket with all his paint tubes in the other — and Sehun takes a minute to admire the contrast between the sunny brandeis blue on his left and the deep gray lavenders trickling into ashy mauvine around the simmering stormclouds on his right. This isn't the big storm they're predicting yet, but they're certainly the evidence that the season has started. Sehun sets down the basket while he squints at the buildings around, trying to decide exactly how to frame this first painting, lifting the lid off the weathertight tub that holds his easel with one foot and setting it up one-handed before propping up the canvas. Sehun never does anything by halves, and he decided back when he came up with the idea for this project that he was going to be doing this series in oil paints rather than acrylic. He'd worked with oils while he was back in school, of course, oil being the traditional medium for painting, but he'd decided soon after that acrylic worked best for his own purposes and had proceeded to abandon oils as soon as they were no longer required. The result being that now he's sadly out of practice and struggling to remember the minute rules. The rabbit glue gesso takes much longer to dry than the stuff he tends to use, so Sehun had bought a canvas that came already primed to use for his first painting, just in case the ideal moment came before his own were ready to use. He mixes colors fast, thinning out the thick oil pigment so that he can quickly block out the shapes of the buildings in a midtone gray before setting to work on painting the sky itself; the clouds are apt to change at a moment's notice, so he wants to get as much of the basic shape laid out on the canvas as he can. 

The paints handle differently than Sehun is used to, which makes it slow going for a while. By the time he has to stop he's made slightly less progress than he had hoped for, but he's got enough of a base to work off of tomorrow, so the thought doesn't bother him as much as it might otherwise. What _does_ bother him is the fact that he's about to clean up to head off to work and Kyungsoo still isn't home. Sehun's shift runs late, and if he doesn't see his boyfriend before he leaves, he's unlikely to catch him awake for the rest of the day. He lingers around until the last possible moment, but eventually has to swallow his disappointment and lock the door to the empty apartment before taking the stairs two or three at a time to get to the restaurant before his boss is provoked into one of her famously long rants. (The turnover in thin-skinned staff is legendary among the restaurants of the area.) It's luckily just a block and a half away, so Sehun makes it there in time, even if he's out of breath, and he spends nearly his entire shift watching the rain set in, counting down the minutes before he can head home again. The apartment is dark when he finally gets back. Sehun peels off his rainsoaked clothes and leaves them in a pile on the floor that he knows Kyungsoo will glare at later, before climbing under the covers and cuddling up close to the nearest heat source. Kyungsoo groans and tries to push his icy feet away, eventually giving in and rolling over to wrap his arms around Sehun. It's not as good as actual conscious interaction, but Sehun will take what he can get.

 

The next day starts off frustrating and only gets worse. Kyungsoo does indeed have something to say about the pile of clothes on the floor, namely, "are you five years old? Oh my god, they're still wet- Stop acting like an attention-seeking toddler, for fucks sake, Sehun, you're twenty-two years old." Having said this, he stalks off to the kitchen to bang coffee mugs down onto the counter, making Sehun wonder guiltily just how late he'd stayed at the office last night. He tries to smooth the situation over by meekly asking about Kyungsoo's day, and ends up gritting his teeth through what feels like borrowed opinions repeated verbatim, each one prefaced with "Junmyeon-ssi said-" or "Junmyeon-ssi told me that-"

"I didn't ask what _Junmyeon-ssi_ thought about the view from your window; I asked what _you_ thought," Sehun mutters, earning a smack upside the head.

Kyungsoo heads back out right after breakfast, leaving Sehun to putter around the living room until finally settling down to pick up his painting where he left off the day before. This ends up turning into an exercise in frustration. Each brush stroke seems to do nothing but mar the painting further, until Sehun finally snaps, the paintbrush following soon afterwards. He flings the broken halves off the edge of the balcony with a strangled yell before quickly ducking away from the edge in case someone looks up. Sehun sinks down to sit with his back to the sliding glass door as a drop of sweat makes its way down from his hairline, eventually hanging off the edge of his jaw until he brushes it away irritably. The rain has done nothing to cut down the heat, so the supersaturated air lies over his face like a hot blanket. The weather is obviously playing merry hell with everyone's mood, Sehun thinks. He ends up sitting in front of the tv with a fan going next to him at full blast all day, eating every popsicle in the house and feeling bad about it even as he unwraps the last one. By the time Kyungsoo gets home again, this time early enough to see Sehun before he leaves once again for his night job, Sehun feels positively contrite. Enough to smile pleasantly as Kyungsoo tells him about another day spent in the delightful company of Kim Junmyeon. Kim Junmyeon, who apparently knows literally everyone in the company and is the darling of the management board. Kim Junmyeon, who has the most contacts in the building industry out of the entire publicity department, and who can win over the most dubious of potential clients with his dazzling smile, and who is- coming over for dinner tomorrow?

"What?" says Sehun, feeling particularly clever.

"I'd like you to meet him, you know?" Kyungsoo says, unconcerned. "He's a really nice guy, and I think you might like to get to know him."

"This is all moving a little fast, isn't it?" Sehun asks, and is met with an eye roll.

"It's not like you're supposed to _date_ him or anything," laughs Kyungsoo. 

"God, I hope not," Sehun mumbles under his breath.

"Anyway, how's the painting going?"

Sehun groans and slouches lower in his seat.

"That bad, huh?" Kyungsoo sounds sympathetic. "Have you tried getting any books about painting with oils? It might help to remind you how to go about it, even if you can't have an actual expert standing by to help?"

"No," says Sehun. "I mean, I googled it, but I figured I'd just work it out for myself. It's just not going as fast as I hoped it would. And who says I'm not an expert anyway?"

"Well, expert, if you're pressed for time, you really might think about getting a book or two," Kyungsoo suggests mildly.

"Books are your solution to everything," Sehun sighs, but the next day ends up wandering down the nearby streets in search of any place with books of a vaguely painting nature.  
He ends up wandering into a small used bookstore tucked between a coffee shop and a laundromat where he picks up what essentially looks like "Oil Painting For Dummies" and, on a whim, a biography of J. M. W. Turner. The cashier unfolds from an impressive slouch as Sehun approaches and gives him a little smile.

"Hey," he says. "Did you find whatever you were looking for?"

Sehun nods, rummaging through his pockets absentmindedly for the loose bills he'd stuffed in there. When he looks up, it's to see a pair of warm brown eyes still regarding him with interest. Sehun is pretty sure he'd checked that there was no paint on his face before he left, but he's been wrong before.

"What?" he blurts out after an awkward moment.

"Oh!" The cashier seems realize he'd been standing there and looks away, embarrassed, a faint pink spreading over his tanned skin. "I mean- It's just- I haven't seen you here before."

"Oh," Sehun isn't sure if he's supposed to introduce himself or what. "Yeah. It's the closest bookstore? I was looking for a book."

Another awkward pause before-

"My name's Jongin."

Ah. Introductions _are_ the right answer.

"I'm Sehun," he says, and then, because that seems weirdly abrupt, "I'm kind of a painter, I guess."

Jongin looks down at the two books on the counter.

"Really?" he deadpans. "And here I was going to guess engineer."

Sehun snorts and that seems to have broken the ice a bit because Jongin relaxes and gives him another little smile.

"Trying something new?" Jongin asks, nodding at the books while he punches numbers into the register.

"Yeah," Sehun stares at the glossy reproduction of _Rain, Steam and Speed_ on the biography cover. "It's... not going so well."

"Well, if my books can't help the struggling artist, nothing can," Jongin's mouth closes around the words like he's regretted them as soon as he spoke, but he presses on a second later. "If you don't mind, I'd love to hear what the end results are."

"Ugh, the way things are going, no one is going to want to see the end result."

Jongin gives him a little fist pump as he hands over the paper bag with the books. "Fighting!"

Sehun rolls his eyes, but finds himself smiling back anyway. He lets out a hiss when the bag shifts and leaves a paper cut on his hand, sending Jongin diving beneath the counter at lightning speed.

"I can fix that!" he emerges holding a bandaid triumphantly. 

He was planning to get one on his own when he gets home, since Kyungsoo keeps Hulk bandaids to put on tiny injuries that he thinks Sehun is making too much of a fuss over, but Sehun's hand is tightly in Jongin's grip before he can say anything. 

"You have no idea how many times I cut myself on these bags every day."

Jongin wiggles his own fingers to show off the two bandaids of his own. "There, now we're bandaid buddies."

Sehun looks back and forth between the grinning Jongin and his newly bandaged finger. How do you even react when someone you've met five minutes ago grabs your hand and plasters a... Superman bandaid on it? He shifts his weight from one foot to the other in lieu of responding. Jongin clears his throat and brushes the bandage wrapper off the counter.

"Can't damage the talented painter hands, you know," he says.

"Oh."

Sehun continues to look at the bandaid. 

"Well," he says, "I should get going. Paint stuff. Um. Thanks."

"Yes," says Jongin, sounding every bit as uncomfortable as Sehun feels. "Good luck. With the painting things."

Sehun waves as he pulls the door open, and it's not until he's outside and halfway home that he realizes that not only had that been the most painfully awkward conversation he'd had in entire years, but that Jongin had probably certainly been hitting on him the entire time. He groans and rubs his face. Way to be perceptive, Sehun. Time to forget any of that had ever happened. Time to go home and- ... and get ready for their dinner guest. Because this day could not _possibly_ get any better. Sehun makes up his mind right then and there that at the very least he is going to demand that Kyungsoo kiss his finger better.

 

When he gets back, Kyungsoo is already home and stirring something in a pot, so Sehun simply stands in the doorway and watches for a second.

"This is so domestic I could cry," he says, coming to peer over his shoulder at the stove. He's not entirely sure things have cooled down from the day before, but the way Kyungsoo is humming distractedly while sniffing the various spice bottles is encouraging.

"Well, here's your opportunity," Kyungsoo hands him a grocery bag off the kitchen counter. "Chop onions and cry all you want."

"I'm _injured_ ," Sehun whines, holding up his finger as proof. "I can't chop anything."  
Kyungsoo eyes the bandaged finger.

"Who told you you could bring that DC scum into this house of Marvel?" he demands. "Chop onions now, as punishment for your blasphemy."

Sehun can feel himself settling down into their usual easy banter again, the tense mood that had been hanging over them for the past day peeling away like the papery onion skins under his fingers, and he nudges Kyungsoo gently with his hip as he comes to stand at the cutting board next to him.

"Hey," he says. Kyungsoo glances over out of the corner of his eye. "Sorry for being a slob."

"Mm. Sorry for being a nag."

They work in companionable silence for a moment. Sehun chops the onions into quarters, then stops and glances between them and the pot.

"How do you want these cut?" he asks. "I have no idea what you're making."

"We're just having chicken with a sauce kind of thing. If I can figure it out," Kyungsoo frowns into the pot. "I dunno, chop it small enough that you'd be okay with putting into your mouth."

"It's food," Sehun points out. "There is very little food I will not put in my mouth. This is not the most helpful instruction you could give me."

Kyungsoo sighs and bumps him out of the way, taking the knife and onion into his own hands. 

"Here, just do this."

Sehun's slices are far clumsier and irregular than Kyungsoo's, but they seem to pass muster since Kyungsoo nods and turns back to the pot where he appears to be very slowly melting butter. Sehun starts sniffing and blinking before too long, the sharp onions making his eyes water.

"I can't do this," he complains. "I don't have glass eyeballs like you."

"You're being an infant."

"It _hurts_. It's getting all in my paper cut."

Sehun drops the knife. He takes a step back, scrubbing at his eyes with the backs of his hands.

"No, I actually can't," he says. "This is the worst."

He blinks a couple times to see Kyungsoo standing in front of him. Kyungsoo takes his hands and pulls them away from his face.

"Don't rub it into your eyes, idiot," he says. "Is it really getting in your cut?"

"Yes," Sehun pouts. 

Kyungsoo brings the bandaged finger to his lips to make the loudest, most obnoxious smacking kiss he can, and then laughs at Sehun's face.

"My eyes hurt too," Sehun points out. 

"If you think I'm going to put my mouth on your eyeballs, you'd better think again," Kyungsoo grimaces, but pulls Sehun down by the back of his neck to plant a kiss on each eyelid anyway.

Kyungsoo ends up finishing the onions and most of the other cooking-related tasks, banishing Sehun off to the side to toss lettuce with some olive oil, where he can't hurt himself. By the time the doorbell rings, Sehun is actually in a good mood and prepared to give this Junmyeon guy a chance. This is why when Kyungsoo opens the door and is greeted by a guy with a way too genuine smile, far too many compliments about the apartment decor, and a bottle of way too expensive wine, Sehun is able to continue setting the table in relative peace, only ruffled slightly by the enthusiastic one-armed hug he witnesses through the door into the hallway. He arranges his face into the absolute most pleasant expression he is capable of making (which, granted, often comes across as "attractively bored" but Kyungsoo always seems to find that either endearing or hilarious, so that's okay) before coming out into the living room. The look Junmyeon gives him can only be described as appraising, and Sehun bristles again as he gets the distinct impression he's being pleasantly examined and found wanting before Junmyeon comes forward, all eye smiles and polite greetings, to shake his hand. Sehun notices rather unkindly that his tie is completely the wrong color for the shirt he's wearing, and that he's mixing two patterns that should really never be worn together.

"You must be Sehun," Junmyeon makes a perfect bow,  "Nice to meet you. You're Kyungsoo's roommate?"

"His boyfriend," says Sehun icily.

To his credit, Junmyeon only freezes for a second.

"Ah, really?" He recovers rather gracefully, Sehun thinks. "Kyungsoo has mentioned you a few times, but we haven't really gotten to know each other very well yet."

"How wonderful," Sehun smiles, earning a warning glare from Kyungsoo, who mouths _be polite_ from across the room.

"Well. If you'll get glasses, maybe we can try some of the wine before dinner?" Junmyeon's attempt to change the topic does not achieve the desired effect, since Sehun only grinds his teeth and stares daggers when Kyungsoo hurries out of the room.

Junmyeon's eyebrows rise in confusion when he comes back holding three glasses.

"He's old enough to drink?" Junmyeon asks.

" _He_ is," Sehun snaps, taking the glasses and pouring the wine himself. "Would you care to check ID?"

"Sehun, _manners_ ," Kyungsoo hisses.

"I'll use them if he does," mutters Sehun in reply. Kyungsoo looks upset.

Sehun does nothing to alleviate the situation, instead choosing to stare over the rim of his glass at Junmyeon and disagree with everything he says, even if only inside his own head. By the time they sit down to eat and Junmyeon reaches for the pepper, Sehun has already made up his mind that he loathes him with a fiery passion. Kyungsoo's hand on Sehun's knee keeps him quiet throughout dinner, but this gives him time to observe how Junmyeon laughs at everything Kyungsoo says, how he easily takes over the table as if he's known them for years, and how completely and thoroughly he ignores Sehun's presence. In fact, Junmyeon spends so much time ignoring him that when he finally addresses him with a remark, Sehun doesn't immediately notice.

"What?" he says, blinking.

"I just asked what you do for a living?" Junmyeon repeats.

"Oh. I'm... a painter."

"Really?" Junmyeon looks around. "You must have done some of the paintings in here then."

He nods towards "501 Main Street" and Sehun feels positively amiable for a second.

"He's very good," Kyungsoo says, patting his leg with a sideways smile.

"He must be, to make painting lucrative," Junmyeon's face shows nothing but calm interest. "I'd always heard that it's hard for even the best painters to make a living doing that, but you manage to keep an apartment like this. I'm very impressed."

Sehun feels something like ice trickle down his spine and through all his limbs as he thinks of all the rent checks with Kyungsoo's name and signature on them. Junmyeon is still looking at him with cheerful expectation.

"I actually have a job at a restaurant too," Sehun says, angry at his inability to look anywhere but at his plate.

"Sehun works very hard," says Kyungsoo, kindly not mentioning the times he's called Sehun's phone at noon and found him still asleep. Sehun doesn't feel like eating anymore.

Junmyeon doesn't stay long after dinner, which suits Sehun just fine. He stays back near the table while Kyungsoo shows Junmyeon out, waiting to hear the door click shut before he goes out into the hall.

"I don't like him," he says, with no preamble.

Kyungsoo sighs tiredly. "You know, I think I got that."

He waves a despairing hand at Sehun.

"And I'm pretty sure he got that too. Would it have killed you to be polite to him?"

Sehun's jaw drops.

"Were you even listening?" he demands. "Did you hear what he was saying? He treated me like a little kid the entire time!"

"You were _acting_ like a little kid," Kyungsoo says.

The urge to say "he started it" is almost overwhelming, but Sehun can see that that would not exactly help his case.

"What about when he was talking about my paintings?" he says instead. "All that about how even really great painters have trouble making enough money? It's like he was trying to get me either to boast about how wildly successful I am or admit that I'm leeching off your paycheck. There was no way to win that!"

"I think your problem is that you're thinking of it as something you have to 'win' in the first place."

Kyungsoo runs both hands through his hair, the layer of sweat that's covering them both in the muggy weather leaving it standing up in wild flyaways. Sehun is very glad he had not done this until after Junmyeon left, because he's sure no one could ever fail to fall just as hard for a distracted Kyungsoo as Sehun does himself, and he has this vague feeling that Kyungsoo would have objected to him attempting to blind Junmyeon with a spoon.

"He was treating you like his _wife_ or something," Sehun grumbled. "How did that not bother you? He acted like it was his own house from the minute he walked in."

Kyungsoo just fixes him with a look.

"Is this about you being jealous?" he asks, making Sehun cringe. "What, he wasn't respecting your manly claim or anything? Because if you're about to tell me that that's the reason you spent all evening glaring, I swear-"

"What 'manly claim'?" Sehun mutters, flushing slightly. Kyungsoo stops and looks at him.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," he rolls his eyes. "Yes, I see your point."

Sehun is acutely embarrassed, but the topic seems to be moving along less infuriating paths now, so he does his best to both look contrite and continue diverting Kyungsoo's attention.

"Do you want help doing the dishes, hyung?" he asks. 

"Well, I know that's something Oh Sehun would never ask without an ulterior motive, but I'll take what I can get." 

Kyungsoo graciously accepts Sehun's unspoken apology without another word. Sehun makes it a point to get more soap suds on Kyungsoo than on the dishes, trying to argue that it's too hot to scald their hands off without staying properly hydrated, to which Kyungsoo argues that "this does not count as staying hydrated at all, Sehun, do you even know the meaning of the word?" Sehun responds by flicking the water off of his hands onto Kyungsoo's face. The dishes take twice as long to do with two people working, which Kyungsoo points out is counterproductive, but Sehun knows he actually prefers it this way.

 

Sehun manages to finish that first painting over the next few days, poking at it with the palette he keeps stored in a tub of clean water to keep the paints from drying out. (Kyungsoo had vetoed using the kitchen sink for this purpose.) Kyungsoo is in and out during that time, apparently attending meetings and making connections that will help him later on, according to Junmyeon. Junmyeon, along with his ever-helpful advice, continues to figure in their conversations more than Sehun would like, though Kyungsoo makes a noticeable effort to refer to him less and Sehun attempts to respond neutrally when he does. Nothing Kyungsoo can say makes him like Junmyeon any better, however.  Sehun honestly wonders how Kyungsoo can still think so well of him after witnessing what Sehun thought was the most disastrous meeting possible, yet Kyungsoo seems to attribute anything off about Junmyeon's conduct to Sehun's behavior. They have a few not-quite-arguments on this point, but since Junmyeon has been declared a sort of no man's land in their conversation, Sehun can only simmer quietly while Kyungsoo continues to meet potential future clients with his new mentor.

Once the painting is finished, Sehun has nothing much to do except go back to watching daytime dramas in front of three oscillating fans, eating ice cream out of the tub while he checks the weather. Kyungsoo texts him from work at least once a day with some variation of _I heard a cold front might be moving in nearby- don't give up yet, Sehunnie!_ before heading into interminable meetings all over town. If Sehun were to admit the reasons for his still-growing dislike of Junmyeon, it would be at least partially because the sudden explosion in Kyungsoo's schedule made it close to impossible to hold a conversation longer than fifteen minutes at a time. Sehun finds himself taking buses and trains over to Kyungsoo's office several times to eat lunch together, but he knows that when the next storm rolls in, his vast tracts of free time will disappear for a while. Still, this is just temporary, Sehun tells himself. Once Kyungsoo gets a contract, he can sit around the house to sketch floorplans and make little experimental models on the living room carpet, where, if he has anything to say about it, Junmyeon will not be welcome.

By the end of the week, a morning dawns gray and promisingly overcast. Sehun presses his nose to the window glass, prompting Kyungsoo to call him a kid in a candy store window. Sehun looks over his shoulder to stick out his tongue at Kyungsoo, who is still wrapped in wrinkled sheets and laughing at him from the bed. When he finally opens the windows, Sehun can smell the ozone through the thick, hot air. He checks the weather report on his phone for confirmation, even though the heavy line of clouds lying dark on the horizon is proof enough of the oncoming storm for him to start laying out all of his supplies. Kyungsoo has a late start that morning, which he spends alternating between watching Sehun running around with a canvas under his arm and running around himself to make sure his portfolio is pulled together with all the material he'll need for today's big meeting. When Sehun asks him why he is freaking out about meeting someone after spending all week doing exactly the same thing, Kyungsoo makes a strangled noise of pure panicked misery.

"It's _not_ exactly the same," he groans. "This man is actively looking for someone to design a project. Whether or not our firm gets this contract depends completely on how much I impress him today."

"Well," Sehun comes up behind him to wrap arms around his waist, "Think of it like this... If he looks at your stuff and _doesn't_ want to hire you, you'd probably hate working with him anyway and he's dumb and you're brilliant so fuck him, man."

Kyungsoo laughs at that, the sound easing some of the sympathetic tension that had settled over Sehun just as Sehun can feel some of that same tension draining out of the man in his arms. He pokes the side of Kyungsoo's neck with his nose.

"It'll be okay. You'll do great," he assures him.

"Hmm, at least _one_ of us is confident on that point." Kyungsoo turns in his arms and stands on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. "I'll do my best."

"What time do you have to leave here to meet this asshole?" Sehun asks.

"Well, it's about a two-hour drive each way, so Junmyeon-ssi is driving me from the office building in about an hour and a half..."

"Oh," Sehun frowns. "What time are you meeting _that_ asshole then?"

"Sehun." Kyungsoo's tone is warning.

"Okay, okay," Sehun holds up his hands in surrender. "I mean, what time are you leaving here?"

"About twenty minutes, I think? I want to be sure I catch the right bus. Painting looks good today, right?"

"Mmhm." Sehun hums in agreement, looking out towards the balcony door at the ever-growing dark streak on the horizon. "I don't think it's supposed to hit until late this afternoon, but it should be around for a while then. They said this one was slow."

"You have a canvas ready?"

Sehun nods. He's spent some of the downtime over the past few days both stretching and preparing canvasses and flipping through the books he'd bought. 

"Yeah, I have everything set up to go whenever the storm actually hits."

Kyungsoo rummages around under the kitchen sink then tosses Sehun the box of heavy garbage bags he unearths. "Here. If it gets too wet to stand outside and paint, you can throw those down on the floor so you can leave the doors open without causing too much water damage."

"Awesome. Thanks." Sehun tosses the box over his shoulder, where it lands neatly on the sofa. "Have you eaten breakfast yet?"

The response he gets is noncommittal, which means no, so Sehun grabs a bagel, slathers it with cream cheese, and shoves it in Kyungsoo's face. Kyungsoo just looks at it cross-eyed.

"How am I supposed to eat that?" he says. "If I bite into it, its creamy guts will come pouring out the other side."

"You have to eat," Sehun waves the bagel in little circles before his nose. "You have hours of travel time today."

"Did you have to put half the tub of cream cheese on there?" complains Kyungsoo, but he accepts the bagel anyway. "What are you, Condiment Man? That's gross."

"Stop complaining and eat. You'll get sick if you don't."

"Yes, mother." Kyungsoo stops and gives a dramatic shudder. "You know, I think this relationship is getting way more Oedipal than I'm personally comfortable with."

Sehun considers this. "Yeah, that's kinda creepy. Eat it because you love me then."

"I'm positively drowning in your love," Kyungsoo looks down at the bagel again. "Or maybe just cream cheese. It's hard to tell with you sometimes."

"Eat and get on the damned bus already, before I attempt to make dinner too," Sehun threatens, and Kyungsoo laughs at him through a mouthful of baked goods.

 

Kyungsoo checks his files three more times before he makes it out the door, leaving Sehun standing in the middle of the room and stretching his arms high above his head with a yawn. Sehun finds that most shows are incredibly hard to follow when one is distracted every five minutes listening for thunder, so he turns off the television within an hour of sitting down. He ends up pulling the coffee table close and lying sideways off the edge of the sofa so that his upper half is balanced over the glass of the tabletop, a dripping popsicle from their replenished store in one hand, the other hand holding open the Turner biography from the bookstore. If someone asked him, Sehun would probably be the first to say he didn't read much, but something about Turner had always pulled him in — Sehun often felt terribly terribly young compared to Kyungsoo, the people Kyungsoo worked with, and even the other painters he encountered, so hearing something about an incredibly young but successful painter does wonders to boost his confidence. He stops jumping up at every promising sound, instead becoming surprisingly engrossed in the book before him. Something about the way Turner thought of color and light reminds Sehun of Kyungsoo, he thinks. Something about the way his paintings seemed to drift further and further from the tangible physical world and became absorbed entirely with light and mist makes him think of Kyungsoo's buildings and what he'd taught Sehun about using light. 

He only gets up when his stomach growls insistently a few hours later, and even then brings the book with him, eyes glued intently to the pages while he eats packaged ramyun straight out of the pot. The more he understands the technique Turner was striving for, the closer Sehun feels to knowing where he wants his own paintings to go. He lets out an audible snerk when he reads contemporary critics' complaints that the paintings looked "unfinished". Leaning his chair back on two legs, Sehun is torn between amusement and frustration when he realizes that the problems he'd been having with the previous painting were almost all due to overworking it. The old advice from his instructors to stop just at the point of "maybe a little bit more" comes belatedly flooding back into his mind. The problem with getting into the habit of working with the same subjects over and over again is that it breeds overconfidence, making it too easy to churn out finished-looking work without thinking too deeply about what the canvas actually conveys. Buildings are so concrete, and Sehun so used to painting them, that the changeable clouds of his newest project had left him floundering as he searched for a final target. 

_Kyungsoo's right. Books are brilliant,_ Sehun thinks, the secrets of the universe now laid bare to him. _I love books._

A loud peal of thunder has him nearly tumbling out of his seat. The sky is black with roiling clouds now, and though no drops are falling yet, Sehun can already smell the impending rain from inside the apartment. It feels like he's only been reading for an hour by his reckoning, but when he glances at his phone the clock there gives him the lie. 5:13 in the afternoon. He's been wrapped up in his reading for at least six hours, and now that he actually thinks about it, he _is_ pretty far in the book now...

It takes another warning rumble to jerk Sehun out of his thoughts again and propel him into motion. He grabs the bucket holding his paint tubes, flinging open the door to the balcony just as it starts to rain. Each drop looks to be about the size of a peanut, except hitting with the force of a paintball pellet at the same time. Sehun reaches down to unfold his easel and to pull the glass palette out of the large cooler he's commandeered for this purpose, hissing between his teeth as he feels the sting of pelting droplets on his back and neck, and he realizes that Kyungsoo may have had a point with the garbage bags — there's no way he'll be able to paint out here in weather like this. He lays the bags out with some duct tape to hold them down against the wind, then sizes up his subject. The light is tinted a wonderfully eerie green, while the lightning visible over the rooftops opposite has hints of almost innumerable shades. Sehun thinks that this storm was worth the days of waiting.

 

The painting takes quick shape under his brush, especially now with his latest flash of inspiration still rolling around at the front of his mind, and Sehun is just in the middle of layering white and hints of red around where a streak of lightning leaves the clouds when his phone buzzes, making him jerk away from the canvas to avoid smashing the bristles against it. He fumbles to flip the phone over with the backs of his paint-covered hands, paintbrush clenched in his teeth, and hits the speaker button with his elbow.

"Mwth mp?"

"Sehun?"

Oh, right. Mouth full. 

"Yeah. What's up?" he tries again, this time without a mouth full of brush.

"Hi. I won't be back until late."

Kyungsoo sounds distracted. Sehun frowns, now only half paying attention to the colors he's mixing and tweaking on his palette.

"Why?"

"It's raining too hard to drive," Kyungsoo says and Sehun hears doors opening and closing on the other end. "Cars are pulled over all along the road and visibility is really bad. We were on our way back from the meeting when it hit, so we got caught on the road."

"So what are you doing now?"

"Well, Junmyeon's place is really close, so I think we're just going to stay put here until it clears up."

It's a good thing he's not holding his phone right now because a paintbrush is a hell of a lot cheaper to break, and the creaking of wood is a testament to how tight his grip is right now. His mood plummets sharply, the storm and paint all but forgotten.

“Are you painting the storm right now?” Kyungsoo asks. “It’s a really good one. I should get off and let you get back to work. I’ll see you later, okay? I don't know how long it'll last, so you don't have to wait up."

"Yes," Sehun says around the lump in his throat. "Yes, I'm painting. I'll stay up. I'll- yes."

"Don't worry about it. Just concentrate on painting and get some rest."

"Okay," Sehun repeats. "Okay. I'll see you when you get back. I'll stay up."

His phone screen goes dark as he stares blankly at the canvas before him. A low roll of thunder sounds again. His hands are trembling slightly, almost as if shaken by the sound. His thoughts feel like they're running frantically without actually getting anywhere, so Sehun carefully sets down the brush and palette before stepping out onto the balcony. He might as well have stepped into a pool, the rain coming down so hard that he's soaked through to the skin in an instant. He hadn't noticed when the sun went down, but all the streetlamps and surrounding windows are lit now, even though the pinpricks of light are almost hidden by what appears to be a thick curtain of water. Sehun is not sure he's ever been out in a storm this heavy. The air has about as much water in it as it does actual air, while the wind takes the opportunity every few seconds to send it all flying sideways with gusts that nearly bowl Sehun over. It's a good thing the railing is high enough to keep most of their belongings from being blown away, but he notices that several small potted plants have mysteriously disappeared. Luckily, no one is out on the streets to be hit with flying pottery, since apparently no one but Sehun is addled enough to stand in a storm like this at all. The sound level has gotten louder since he stepped outside, so he assumes the white noise he hears is only partially in his own head. 

_Kyungsoo is at Junmyeon's house_ , he thinks blearily. 

This is fine. This is nothing to be upset about. Kyungsoo had told him that it's too dangerous to be driving right now, and the fact that Sehun can't make out distinct shapes further away than the railing's edge proves this to be true. The idea of Kyungsoo trying to brave the roads in these conditions just because Sehun doesn't like his coworker is ridiculous. It makes perfect sense to run for the nearest shelter, and Junmyeon's house would have everything they needed to wait out the storm, like warm drinks and towels and a dryer for wet clothes and-

No. Sehun crouches down, hands clutching tight at the bars of the railing. That is a train of thought that needs to stop right right there. It is a perfectly normal thing to provide bedraggled guests the opportunity to dry off before they catch hypothermia. Sehun had been drenched within thirty seconds of this, and is probably about to start shivering in a second, so only a heartless monster would fail to offer at least a towel. It's courtesy between acquaintances. Sehun would do the same for Junmyeon. He hesitates then and thinks carefully about that. Junmyeon would do the same for Sehun. Probably. Maybe. According to hearsay, Junmyeon is very pleasant to people who aren't Sehun. Kyungsoo is not Sehun, nor is Sehun present, therefore Junmyeon is probably being very gracious and pleasant and-

No. This is not okay. This is not even a little bit okay. Sehun does shiver then. Kyungsoo is allowed to get along with his coworkers, so the very fact that he's reacting so violently to this makes Sehun stop and prod a little deeper into it. Kyungsoo would tell him to think about this rationally, so he takes a deep breath and thinks about Kyungsoo laughing at one of his jokes, pictures his eyes growing wide and sparkling with merriment. This is a good thing. He changes the picture, replacing himself with one of their friends from school, and finding that this is also a pleasing thought. Finally, he replaces the friend with Junmyeon. The sudden sick punch to his gut leaves Sehun gasping as he collapses backwards to sit painfully on the ground. Sehun is jealous, he realizes with horror. He's jealous of Junmyeon and of the idea that Kyungsoo might enjoy spending time with Junmyeon. 

_Why?_ he wonders miserably.

Why does the thought of Junmyeon getting close to Kyungsoo set his teeth so on edge? Why had he taken such an instant dislike to Junmyeon? Sehun watches a steady stream of water trickle in through the open door, pooling on the black garbage bags around the legs of his easel. Junmyeon is immediately likeable. Kyungsoo had spent enough time talking about him those first few days to make that clear. Kyungsoo had immediately liked Sehun too, though. They've always gotten along like a house on fire, even from day one, because Kyungsoo gets along with people. It's one of the many things Sehun has always admired and envied and loved about him, so what makes Junmyeon so different? Junmyeon had strode into the room and into control of the situation — there is a kind of effortless confidence about Junmyeon that Sehun has never been able to achieve in his life. He knows what to say at any given moment to win people over and to at their ease, while Sehun is left with awkward silences and tongue-tied stumbling faux pas. Junmyeon is poised and in control. Sehun has never been in control of his life and wouldn't even begin to know what it feels like to be anything other than lost in a sea of too many confusing, uncertain emotions. He's always counted on Kyungsoo to know what he's doing, but it now occurs to him for the first time to wonder if maybe Kyungsoo would like the burden of responsibility to fall on shoulders other than his own occasionally. The idea terrifies Sehun. Junmyeon is everything Sehun isn't, his very existence now sending Sehun into near meltdowns when he imagines a day where Kyungsoo realizes that he wants more than Sehun can give him. 

It all boils down to this: Junmyeon makes Sehun feel horribly and utterly inadequate. 

The revelation is not so much staggering as it is simply full of numb terror. Sehun doesn't really know how long he sits there, legs pulled tightly up to his chest with arms wrapped around his knees, but he only jerks out of his daze when the world goes strangely quiet. It's no longer raining, which means that Kyungsoo will be headed home soon. Kyungsoo will be coming home after hours of Junmyeon's pleasant, mature companionship and he will see Sehun in all his needy emotional distress and he will- what? Sehun doesn't know because, once again, he feels adrift in the ocean with no paddle and no sight of shore. His soaked clothes go into the laundry basket as he peels them off, that's one thing he _does_ know, and the waterlogged garbage bags are taken care of with a few towels tossed over them. Sehun wraps himself in a blanket stolen off the bed and lies on the sofa, staring at the front door.

He doesn't notice falling asleep, but the soft click of the door closing startles his eyes open. He silently watches the figure fumbling around in the dim light, trying to discern anything different in his movements, anything subtle shift in his affections, as if he could read how Kyungsoo feels about Junmyeon in the way he lines his shoes up by the mat. The lights come on and Kyungsoo pauses with his hand on the switch before his eyes soften at the sight of Sehun.

"I told you not to wait up," he says.

"I wanted to see you," Sehun answers.

Kyungsoo holds out both hands with a smile.

"Come to bed."

Kyungsoo's head fits neatly under his chin as Sehun wraps him into a hug, and he molds perfectly against Sehun's chest as they settle under the blankets, and Sehun thinks that this, at least, is something he can do right.

 

The next morning feels like the calm after the storm. Kyungsoo just laughs at Sehun's quick towel fix when they peel up the trashbags together, which Sehun scowls at. He runs back and forth willingly doing Kyungsoo's bidding, and then, after Kyungsoo leaves, focuses wholly on finishing the painting from last night. The paints on his palette are barely too gummy to use, Sehun having forgotten to put them back underwater, so he mixes just enough to finish defining the one bright line of lightning he had been working on. He lacks confidence in his ability to recreate all the colors he'd had last night, which conveniently keeps him from reworking more than the tiniest details. By the time he has to clean up in the evening to get ready for his restaurant shift, the painting is as close to finished as he can get it. He carefully puts everything away and even makes an effort to clean up the apartment before he leaves, clearing all his piled-up dishes into the sink and putting his laptop and books into one stack. Sehun has decided that last night's realization is a wake up call to get his act together. He's going to make decisions and be proactive and get things accomplished in his life. He squares his shoulders and his shirt collar, then steps out the door.

He brings back late-night bubble tea, which he and Kyungsoo drink lounging in bed while Kyungsoo laughs at Sehun's new life plan.

"You're already doing fine," he says. "You don't need to stress about things."

"You do," points out Sehun.

Kyungsoo steals one of his tapioca bubbles over his protests. "I stress so you don't have to."

"That doesn't seem fair," Sehun pouts.

"What, the bubble or the stress?"

"Both."

"Who said relationships have to be perfectly fair, though?" Kyungsoo drops two bubbles from his drink into Sehun's cup. "There's always going to be one person who works harder or does more.  If the person who does more for the other doesn't mind, worrying about who _owes_ whom is going to cause fighting, don't you think?"

"It still bothers me though," Sehun mumbles around his straw.

Kyungsoo doesn't quite slam his drink down onto the bedside table, and Sehun thinks he's angry until he rolls over to pin Sehun to the bed.

"Then you're just going to have to sell yourself into prostitution to me," Kyungsoo says. "To pay off your debt."

"Oh,   _darn_ ," mourns Sehun, smiling enthusiastically. "Because I hate that."

"I thought you might. Put that damned drink down before you spill it."

Kyungsoo's hands at his waistband make this a more difficult task than it might otherwise be, but Sehun manages to land the plastic cup on a flat surface while his other hand comes up to rest on Kyungsoo's neck.

"I'm still going to do all of the planning shit tomorrow," he says.

"Okay," agrees Kyungsoo and then leans down to kiss him.

 

The next day is Saturday, so Sehun has Kyungsoo all to himself. Normally this would entail lots of lying around on various pieces of furniture while Sehun pulls out the XBox and Kyungsoo backseat games in between StumbleUpon tabs and idle building sketches, but today Sehun has A Plan. He gets up early, disentangling himself from the pile of limbs they'd eventually settled into the night before, and pulling on a pair of old sweatpants. He stands aimlessly in the kitchen for a moment, contemplating making breakfast before he realizes what a spectacularly bad idea this is. They'll go out and get breakfast, he decides. The weather is still cool enough from the rain that being outside is not unbearable, so Sehun plots a walking path for the day ahead. He finds Kyungsoo awake and propped up on one elbow to check the email on his phone, so Sehun collapses dramatically back down onto the mattress, making Kyungsoo squawk indignantly as the phone flies from his hand. Sehun hides his grin in Kyungsoo's thigh.

"Are you actually wearing more clothing than me?" Kyungsoo asks. "Is this what you feel like all the time, because _I am so sorry_."

"Now you know my frustration," Sehun nods. "It's awful."

Showering together turns out not to save as much time as Sehun tries to argue it does, but neither of them complain about leaving the house a half-hour later than Sehun had previously planned. Sehun _does_ complain about how busy the coffee shop is, causing Kyungsoo to point out that most people do, in fact, consume their caffeine in the morning and no, one in the afternoon does not count as morning, even if that's when Sehun usually manages to drag himself out of bed. Sehun loudly objects to sitting inside where they're surrounded by tables full of people and the winding line leading up to the register, so they wander outside to perch on a nearby brick wall. No amount of prying or pleading on Kyungsoo's part will make Sehun divulge his plans for the day, so Sehun is forced to mollify him with a large bite of his cinnamon scone. They spend the time mocking each other's drink choices — "You drink your coffee _black_? I knew your taste buds were defective!" "Yeah, well, what kind of businessman drinks a... soy vanilla latte, anyway?" "One who is supposedly enjoying a relaxing weekend outing." — before Sehun takes Kyungsoo's hand and tugs him along the sidewalk to their next goal. Kyungsoo has given up asking where they're going in favor of trying to step on the backs of Sehun's shoes.

"Exactly which one of us is older, again?" Sehun asks when he has to stop to retie his sneakers for the third time.

"If you're allowed to be the responsible planner, I'm allowed to be the immature one for once," says Kyungsoo, looking at him with wide, innocent eyes.

When they finally stop in front of the building, Kyungsoo looks up at the sign disbelievingly. 

"A hair salon?" he says. "You're getting your hair cut? _I'm_ getting my hair cut?"

"Neither," says Sehun, tugging him by the wrist.

Kyungsoo watches with confusion morphing into amusement while Sehun sits in the salon chair with increasing levels of bleach applied to his hair. Sehun wrinkles his nose at the bleach, the sharp acidic smell burning his nostrils, glaring at Kyungsoo, who has perched a safe distance away to laugh at him.

"Stop snickering," Sehun demands. "Go look through all the hair dye colors over there."

"Why?" Kyungsoo wanders over to a shelf stacked full of small, plastic tubs.

"Because you're picking the color."

Kyungsoo turns to look sharply over his shoulder. "You're actually dying your hair?"

"Yes," Sehun takes a deep breath. "Whatever color you pick, I will put on my head."

"I'm flattered you think so highly of my color choices," Kyungsoo turns over something marked 'Blue Razzberry' and arches an eyebrow. "Aren't you the one with the expertise in that area? I mean, I could design a penthouse for your hair, but I think I'm a little lost now that we're getting into-" he pauses to squint at another label "-Electric Lizard territory."

"If I wanted to pick my own hair color, I would have just done it and waited for you to have a heart attack when I pulled off my beanie," Sehun tries to look crosseyed at his hair, but it's too far slicked back to get a glimpse of. "Just pick a color, okay? Whatever you pick is what I'll use."

"You're so trusting," Kyungsoo smirks. "What if I heinously abuse that trust? How do you feel about metallic orange? Or maybe something that glows under black light?"

"We don't have black lights," Sehun points out.

"I'd be willing to buy novelty light bulbs just for you," Kyungsoo bats his eyelashes. "Oh, here we go. Sehun, I think you're going to have bubblegum hair."

He holds up a pastel pink tub and grins at Sehun's dismayed expression.

"You can still back out," he says. "Are you sure you don't want to pick the dye?"

"I'm sure," Sehun says firmly. "I'll do pink."

The stylist, who has been watching the entire exchange, takes the tub from Kyungsoo's hand. When he rinses the bleach out, Kyungsoo lets out a low whistle. 

"Wow, you're platinum."

Sehun runs his fingers through the strands, bringing them over into his periphereal vision.

"I kind of like it," he says.

"You could keep it like this," Kyungsoo suggests, but Sehun shakes his head.

"You picked pink," he says. "We're going pink."

Kyungsoo watches the dye go into his hair intently, his eyes following the stylist's hands as the container slowly empties onto Sehun's scalp. Sehun wants to wriggle uncomfortably, but the gloved hands running through his hair hold him still. When it's all lathered into his hair and tucked safely under a plastic cap, Sehun is finally able to crack his neck to work out the cricks in his shoulders.

"You're very tense for someone who, not fifteen minutes ago, was shouting 'yes pink lay it on me' and fistpumping," Kyungsoo points out.

"I was psyching myself up," Sehun explains. "You're putting princess pink all over my head, but by god, I'm going to be manly about it."

"You'll be the envy of seven year old girls everywhere," assures Kyungsoo, taking out his phone to snap a picture of Sehun swathed in plastic for posterity.

They spend the hour it takes for the dye to set drawing mustaches on all the pictures in the waiting area magazines and holding up display extensions to each other's head. It is the most immature day they've spent together in entire weeks, and Sehun finds himself feeling more relaxed than he's been since he first heard hints of Junmyeon's existence. It turns out to only take one dye job to color Sehuns hair, confirming all the online research Sehun had done that highly recommended this place above all the others in town. His wallet is about to take a huge hit, he knows, but the incredulous glee on Kyungsoo's face when he sees Sehun's hair dried and styled into upward curves is worth at least a week's paycheck. Kyungsoo refuses to let him cover the hair with a hat when they leave the salon, instead dragging Sehun to the fanciest restaurant in the area over all of his protests.

"I'm not dressed for this!" Sehun panics.

"Just look furtive and handsome and keep your sunglasses on," says Kyungsoo. "Maybe they'll think you're an idol and take pictures. Wouldn't it be hilarious if you showed up on gossip blogs later?"

Sehun hisses, but Kyungsoo's grip is iron. He kicks Kyungsoo under the table when the waitress won't stop staring, his face heating up when she brings them their check at the end of the meal along with an autograph request. If looks could kill, Kyungsoo would be a little pile of ash spilling off his chair now, but the woman is thrilled when Sehun takes the pen and scrawls his name in huge letters across the page. Sehun thinks she may wet herself when he asks her name to address it properly, at the same time delivering a sharp blow to Kyungsoo's shins in order to quell the choking laughs he's giving Sehun. Kyungsoo instantly turns them into a coughing fit and downs his entire glass of water.

Sehun refuses to leave the apartment again for the rest of the weekend, the two of them instead settling back into their usual rhythm of conversation and banter over individual screens. Everything goes back to the way it was, the way it should be, so familiar that Sehun forgets to worry about the impending work week until Kyungsoo gets a call Sunday evening. It's from Junmyeon. Kyungsoo gets up from his seat in the armchair to take the call, while Sehun shakes the unfamiliar pink out of his eyes and doesn't at all listen to Kyungsoo's hushed but animated tone with a sinking heart. When Kyungsoo comes back, he's almost shaking with excitement.

"I got the job!" he announces. He stands next to Sehun, looking down at him like he's not sure if he wants to jump up and down or hug Sehun or collapse into a boneless pile or maybe all three at once. "The meeting on Thursday, remember? He liked my presentation so much, he's hiring our firm for his next construction project, and I'm in charge of design!"

Sehun's brain seems to be warring between overwhelming pride and happiness for Kyungsoo and miserable frustration at Junmyeon's reintroduction into their lives. The happy pride wins out for the most part, prompting Sehun to stand and envelop Kyungsoo in a hug, nuzzling his nose into his hair and pressing kisses just below his ear because he doesn't trust himself enough to speak. 

 

Monday morning dawns cloudy, the sky covered with one single unbroken sheet of cold gray. It reminds Sehun of stainless steel coating the heavens, preventing the sun from ever really reappearing to dry out the storm's aftermath. All week long it remains just on the verge of raining, never enough to bring down the temperatures that slowly begin to climb again, but just enough that Sehun never quite feels like he completely dries out. Within three days he thinks he might be about to grow mold, either from the constant muggy moisture level or from sheer mental stagnation. Contrary to what Sehun had expected and hoped for, now that Kyungsoo has a project he's spending even more time away from home. Apparently Junmyeon was involved in more than just client introduction. Whatever Kyungsoo is doing now involves hours and hours of work locked in the office going over decisions and plans, which Junmyeon improves or approves before passing on designs and reports to their employer. Sehun tries to argue that he doesn't see why Kyungsoo can't sketch and send designs from their living room, like he's always done in the past, but Kyungsoo's explanations go on longer than Sehun has patience to listen to. He's willing to believe that a salaried firm employee has different responsibilities and expectations to satisfy, and yet Sehun can't help but resent the days spent alone. Even the days of interminable client meetings had been better than this. Kyungsoo works later and later, with barely a moment spared to phone in a "hello how are you." 

Sehun itches for his work throughout days spent staring at the four walls or the pages of his books. If only it would rain. He paints a grayscale street scene in one afternoon, the lines blurring and rippling with the wet heat, made all the easier since Sehun seems to go through every day now with a constant breathless dizziness. He sweats under the collar of his restaurant uniform every night, until he forgets what it's like to wear clothes that aren't sticky and clinging damply to his frame. It might be attributable to the addling heat that he sits panting in front of three fans one night, pleading over the phone to Kyungsoo that "no, really, they could come and work here, I wouldn't mind." He would almost welcome Junmyeon with open arms if it meant the opportunity to see Kyungsoo for more than a few drowsy moments late at night, long after Sehun has fallen asleep, exhausted from waiting. He mumbles an "I love you" into Kyungsoo's hair every night, listening every time for something more than an incoherent murmur, which is all he ever gets. Kyungsoo turns down his suggestion, voice coming through tired over the phone speakers.

"It wouldn't be a problem, hyung, really," Sehun persists. "You know this place is bigger than it looks. It'll work."

"We don't have the facilities there to do all the work we need to get done. I know you're trying to help, Sehun-ah... I really do appreciate it. We'd get in the way of your painting anyway. I'm sorry, I have to stay here."

Kyungsoo is tired, or he'd remember that Sehun has nothing to paint. He has nothing to do but wait and fill his days up with distractions from how much he misses Kyungsoo.

"Okay," says Sehun instead, and hangs up to lay his head against the edge of the table.

His apathy turns into angry resentment as days march by, the brief truce he'd made with Junmyeon in his mind dissolving away. Junmyeon is the one keeping Kyungsoo away, failing to see where he's not needed. Kyungsoo's never needed help to create his buildings in the past, but something about Junmyeon now has Kyungsoo hanging off his every word and asking his opinion on everything. They reach their first milestone, and the first Sehun hears about it is when he answers his phone eagerly to hear that Kyungsoo is going out that night. Junmyeon is treating their entire design team to dinner and drinks. Sehun turns his back to Kyungsoo when he finally crawls into bed.

As he moves into the second stage of his designing, Kyungsoo begins to make appearances around the apartment again, though this is almost worse now since whenever Sehun sees him, Kyungsoo has barely a word to speak to him in between calls and constant model-building. Sehun's jokes that doesn't he have interns to do that for him now fall flat, met with no more than a glance. The only things that get Kyungsoo's attention are the scathing comments Sehun levels at Junmyeon within Kyungsoo's hearing. 

"Exactly whose project is this anyway?" Sehun snaps when he sees the phone held to Kyungsoo's ear again. "Yours or his?"

The frown he gets is added to the count of "Times Kyungsoo has Acknowledged My Existence Today," but it fails to make him feel any better.

 

The rumors of another incoming storm that reach Sehun's ears a few days later make him antsy, like he's about to crawl out of his skin. For lack of anything else to do, he starts to paint another scene of the gray, oppressive heat. It feels like it's been going on for forever, the promise of the storm nothing but a mirage for his parched brain.

The sky today is completely gray, but bright, like the clouds are a very thin veil between the sun and the earth, diffusing the light and softening it. It's misting instead of raining. Each hair on Sehun's arm has a tiny droplet clinging to it, which takes entire minutes to grow large enough to trickle down his arm one by one as he paints the varying textures of gray and the rainbowed halos of moisture around the tops of the buildings opposite. Even without direct rays, the mist lays over Sehun's face like a blanket, making it all but impossible to suck in a breath. Kyungsoo hasn't been out to see his progress yet, so Sehun works fast. It's petty and he knows it, but serves Kyungsoo right if he doesn't come out early enough to see the work before it's finished. The scattered colors off the roof of one building just aren't coming out right, which is frustrating him and slowing him down, but the colors are so very faint in the first place that Sehun can't tell if the problem is that he has too much green or not enough. He settles for more burnt umber and calls it good enough. Kyungsoo might know, but Kyungsoo hasn't been out there all day and Sehun isn't about to seek him out for help now. The illusion of self-sufficience extends that far, at least.

It's mostly by chance, and not at all because he was looking for him again, that Sehun comes in off the balcony just as Kyungsoo flops down onto the sofa. His phone is pressed to his ear, prompting Sehun to ask if he's had it surgically attached now. No response.

“Do you really think we should bring the ceiling down by a whole seven feet?" Kyungsoo asks, "I mean, we can do that, I just thought it would throw off the balance of the room. No, that's fine."

He's talking to Junmyeon again, of course. Sehun comes to stand on the carpet and Kyungsoo looks at his paint-caked hands pointedly, making gestures that mean something like "sink" and "wash" and "not on the furniture". Sehun chooses to ignore this in favor of leaning against the arm of the sofa, arms folded, and blatantly eavesdropping. Kyungsoo rolls his eyes.

“No, of course I value your opinion," he says. "I can work up some new plans today and we can start work on another model. I'll make it work."

Sehun makes a decision in a split-second. He swings a leg over Kyungsoo’s thighs, settling down into his lap and ignoring the hands trying to shoo him away. He’s pleased to notice Kyungsoo’s breath hitching when he simply rests his lips on his neck, right under his ear and just on top of his pulse, not moving yet but just teasing.

" _Get off_ ," Kyungsoo hisses.

Sehun sticks out his tongue to lick his lips, catching the faintest bit of bared neck along with it, which pulls a delightful sound from Kyungsoo.

"No, not you, Junmyeon," Kyungsoo's voice is steady, Sehun can tell, because he is carefully willing it to be. "Can I call you back later?"

Sehun hears a muffled voice from the phone say something like, "Is everything okay?"

"It's nothing," Kyungsoo says, so Sehun bites him.

He hopes Junmyeon hears the suddenly stifled yelp, and he hopes Junmyeon knows that this is his cue to exit. _Nothing, is it?_ Sehun brings his hands up to rest on Kyungsoo's shoulders. He resists the urge to card them through the soft brown hair since they're still coated in paint, though he thinks it would be nice to put bits of the sky in Kyungsoo's hair. 

"Something's just come up," Kyungsoo says. 

_It sure has,_ Sehun thinks, smirking into the hollow of Kyungsoo's neck.

"How about tomorrow? I'll call you then."

There's paint smear on his collar that looks like a gray lipstick kiss. Sehun wants to leave one on each of Kyungsoo's shirts for everyone outside to see. He remembers that lipstick on a collar is the cliched evidence of an illicit relationship, and wonders if it says something about him that he's so desperate to leave any mark, any sign of his presence, any physical hint of their relationship. Sehun drives his hips down, feeling Kyungsoo shudder and lift off the couch to meet him. He can feel the rub of denim through his sweatpants, and he craves the friction, but he holds back and circles his hips once, slowly enough that Kyungsoo curls a fist into the side of Sehun's loose wifebeater, trying to drag him down harder. Nice to know he's still wanted, at least.

Junmyeon's still on the line, asking, "Are you sure? You sound weird?"

Sehun is about two seconds away from snatching the phone and hanging up on Junmyeon himself, but some part of him wants to wait and see what Kyungsoo will say and how far he has to go to make him cut short the lingering pleasantries. He'd like to see Kyungsoo make Junmyeon be the one to wait for once. It's a kind of sick fascination that has him moving more insistantly, grinding against the man below him in an easy rhythm, letting his head fall back as he watches the phone in Kyungsoo's hand through lowered lashes. Kyungsoo gulps and he's breathing harshly now, but he makes no move to hang up until Sehun reaches out to grip the back of the sofa.

"Call you tomorrow."

His voice almost breaks on the last word, but the phone has barely left his hand, dropping to land somewhere in the cushions, before Kyungsoo grabs both of Sehun's wrists and wrenches them back to his sides.

"Not on the furniture," he says, his full attention finally, _finally_ on Sehun.

Sehun whimpers at the command in his voice. This is what he wants, he realizes. More than any desire to demonstrate to Junmyeon how much more important he is to Kyungsoo, Sehun wants Kyungsoo to show _him_ that he's important. He wants Kyungsoo to tell him that in words, but also with his eyes and his very presence. With his mouth, his fingers on Sehun's skin.

"I wanted you," Sehun gasps. "I wanted you to pay attention to me."

"I'm paying attention to you now," says Kyungsoo, and he spreads his legs a little wider, settling Sehun closer to him.

He pulls Sehun's hands behind his back. Kyungsoo sets his own rhythm with the pressure on the base of Sehun's spine, which Sehun moves to follow, grinding harder now, and feeling the rub of their clothed erections together.

"That was an important phonecall," Kyungsoo pants.

His fingernails dig into Sehun's wrists as he drags them together roughly. Sehun hears the wind rushing in his ears.

_I'm important,_ he thinks. _Tell me I'm important too._

He moans when Kyungsoo moves his hands from Sehun's wrists to slide down under the elastic at the back of Sehun's pants, cupping Sehun's ass as he leans forward to drag his open mouth along exposed collarbones.

"What do you want?" Kyungsoo murmurs.

_To cut Junmyeon out of the picture. For you to be around when I want you to be. To have you tell me I matter._

"You," Sehun doesn't sob — he _doesn't_. "I want you, hyung."

He's rutting frantically now as the heat and pressure builds low in his stomach, and Sehun thinks the tight ache in his chest may be more insistent, but he rests his forehead down against Kyungsoo's, trying only to notice the warm breath on his face, the flush spreading across Kyungsoo's cheekbones, and the throbbing pleasure spiking between them.

"I'm here," says Kyungsoo, hips stuttering now, and he _is_ but he's not here _enough_ , not for Sehun.

He wonders if he ever will be.

"I'm sorry," Kyungsoo chokes when he comes.

Sehun's sorry too. He doesn't know why. He does sob then, once, and comes tumbling after, spilling into his sweatpants and feeling the wet warmth on his thighs.  
He buries his face in Kyungsoo's neck. Breathing here is easier than it's been for days, something about that smell that's so intrinsically _Kyungsoo_ that cuts through the thick block the air forms in Sehun's throat and lungs every time he inhales.

Kyungsoo tries to shoo him away to the shower, but the arms Sehun winds around his neck stay locked there until he maneuvers them both under the water. Now that Sehun has his attention, he's afraid to relinquish his hold in case Kyungsoo disappears again into his cocoon of work — a world which Sehun is not granted admission to, though Junmyeon is. If he can hold onto Kyungsoo for long enough now, maybe something of his presence will stay with him when he locks himself in the office, once more out of Sehun's reach.

He must not have held on long enough, because when he wakes up the next morning, Kyungsoo has already left. 

 

When Sehun realizes that he's lying curled over the edge of the bed, with his legs on the mattress and his head on the floor, looking up at the slats, he decides that he's probably very bored. He's simultaneously miserable and restless and full of energy, all of which combined leave him in his current situation, which is him staring with worrying interest at the box springs, vibrating gently. He wants to run around and scream and flail madly to work off this unbearable energy thrumming through his limbs, but he's too miserable and lonely to get up. Hunger finally forces him upright and into the kitchen in search of sustenance. With one pop tart hanging out of his mouth, he stares at the half-finished painting from the day before, feeling absolutely no motivation to finish it. A thick coat of purple goes over the entire thing, Sehun having decided that there's no point in having two nearly identical paintings of gray haze, then a cartoonish doodle of Junmyeon's ingratiating smile goes over that. Sehun spends an almost happy half hour throwing darts at the charactature's nose before collapsing back into electrified boredom. He thinks he can practically see the four walls of the room getting closer together, not unlike a scrap compactor threatening to crush him slowly into a little cube. Never in his life has he been so upset to have the day off. When he concludes that hurtling through the restaurant door and screaming for someone to hand him dishes to wash is probably not the safest plan for maintaining his reputation _or_ his job, the only other option he comes up with is to go out somewhere. Another week is winding to a close, meaning that the streets and bars will be full of people just as bored and desperate for excitement as he is. Sehun wonders idly if he'll get to see a bar fight. Maybe he'll start one if none seem forthcoming. 

No matter what a terrible plan that might be, by the time the sun goes down, Sehun is out on the street, following the sounds of voices wherever they sound most promising. Pounding music and rushes of movement lead him to a dark club entrance, and Sehun isn't wearing clothes particularly made for clubbing — doesn't even own any to begin with — but the almost threadbare white tank and slightly too small jeans seem to pass muster. There isn't a face around he recognizes, which would normally discomfit him, except the deafening music and whirl of bodies around him seems to suck out some of the overwhelming energy that's been aching in all of his joints. A third drink quickly follows the second and the first in rapid succession after Sehun takes a seat at the bar counter. Beams of light like searchlights dart around the room, showing in almost primary bright colors against the light fog pouring into the room, before crossing each other to meld and create deep varied hues of purple-scarlet and muted teal verging into aqua. The energy isn't nearly as unpleasant now that he can concentrate it into feeling the music beat against his eardrums in a steady rhythm, and he's almost too caught up in peacefully plotting the composition of dark figures against an amorphous background of colored light to notice someone claiming the seat next to him. 

"You look like-"

Sehun blinks in surprise when a voice immediately to his left addresses him. He could say the same thing, because he knows this face, he knows he does, he just can't place it...

"Sehun?"

It takes him a full fifteen seconds before recognition finally dawns, which he attributes to the fact that Jongin looks so incredibly different here than he had when they'd met, and not at all to the drinks now tingling under his skin.

"I almost didn't recognize you," Jongin says incredulously. "You know you have cotton candy hair now?"

Sehun brings a hand up to grab at his fringe.

"What?" he says, in shrill mock-horror. "The man in the scary disappearing shop in the alley said it was normal shampoo!"

Jongin laughs, open and sincere. Sehun finds himself laughing too. 

"One-time customers make me sad, you know," says Jongin, looking incredibly happy. "Was it the Superman bandaid? I know that was a little bit weird, but I hope I didn't scare you into never visiting the shop again."

"No," Sehun hastens to assure him. "I mean, I've just been really busy with painting and stuff."

"Ah, that's right. The famous painter, Sehun. I did say I wanted to know how that all turned out though. Did the books help any?"

"Yeah, a whole lot, actually." Sehun looks at the ceiling. "I figured a whole bunch of stuff out, like what I was doing wrong and all that. I guess I just have to wait for it to rain again so I can start the next one."

"I thought it was supposed to rain tomorrow or the day after or something."

"Yeah." 

They lapse into silence. 

"I didn't expect to see you here," Sehun says eventually.

"Is that bad, though?" asks Jongin. 

"No, I mean. I guess my brain just wouldn't think to make the connection between a book store and a club."

"Everyone needs some way to pay the bills," Jongin shrugs. "And I like to dance."

He tilts his head, a mischievous smile playing on his lips. He's wearing all black, the only color around him coming from the many multicolored lights overhead. They play over the curve of his arms like stained glass reflections, catching in the creases of his leather pants. Jongin's hair, which was light and curled slightly when they first met, is now slicked back away from his face, making everything about him seem older and more angular. The occasional brighter lights set his eyes flashing the same warm brown as his skin, and Sehun automatically begins mixing a color palette in his mind. Jongin doesn't seem to notice Sehun's scrutiny, or at least isn't fazed by it.

"Would you be less disconcerted if I said that I spend most of my time lying on the pillows in the children's section?" he asks.

"You have no idea what a load off my mind that is," Sehun heaves a sigh, making Jongin laugh again, his eyes crinkling as he leans sideways against the bar.

"You should dance," he tells Sehun, who shakes his head.

"Just watching is good enough," he says, but Jongin refuses to take that for an answer.

"Just watching is _never_ good enough," Jongin insists. "If you're going to do something, then do it. If you're going to go to a club, get out there and dance." He stands up, holding out a hand for Sehun to take. "Consider it an apology for never coming back to tell me about the paintings."

Sehun shakes his head again, this time in resignation, before sliding his hand into Jongin's.  
There are so many people moving around in such a tight space that Sehun is afraid to do more than bounce on the balls of his feet for a while, lest he accidentally elbow someone in the eye. Jongin is having no trouble whatsoever, his body swaying easily into empty pockets in the crowd that Sehun would not have seen himself. He swats at Sehun's hip.

"Loosen up," he insists, over the loud music. "It's painful just looking at you."

"It's never painful to look at me," Sehun huffs, turning up his nose, but he starts to move a little more.

"No delusions of grandeur here, I see," teases Jongin.

"I don't see you looking away."

Jongin colors, but still doesn't break eye contact. He moves closer instead, right up to Sehun, until he's near enough to put a hand on Sehun's shoulder and lean in to continue speaking comfortably over the beat.

"Your hair looks like fairy farts," he says. "It's hard not to stare at it."

He's still moving. Something prompts Sehun to bring his hands up to Jongin's hips, finding it easier to copy the motion himself with that guidance. Then Jongin is even closer, his mouth next to Sehun's ear like he's whispering secrets.

"I like it," he says.

Sehun feels fingers in the pink strands just moments before he feels a pair of lips pressed to his own. Jongin dedicates his entire attention to kissing, only swaying unconsciously now while he grips Sehun's shoulders, and the intensity of his focus makes Sehun gasp. His mouth instantly opens under Sehun's, waiting ready and responsive to anything Sehun wants to do, which at this moment is everything. Sehun wants to claim every inch of that mouth, which Jongin gladly accepts, sucking on Sehun's tongue when it slides into his mouth and moaning happily when Sehun pulls back and snags Jongin's lower lip between his teeth. Sehun brings a hand up from Jongin's hips to grab his jaw and turn it so that he can lick more easily deep along the inside of his cheeks behind his teeth, slow and dirty. He forgets what he's doing or where he is, lost in Jongin's mouth and drunk on the control Jongin surrenders completely to him — control that has always belonged to Kyungsoo in the past, and-

Kyungsoo.

Someone has sent cold electricity along every nerve and every inch of Sehun's skin, paralyzing him. Black spots start to cloud the edges of his vision and he must have pushed Jongin away, because Sehun catches sight of his shocked face for an instant before he stumbles and gropes blindly for a way out. There's a door to the outside, onto some sort of daytime eating area, which Sehun barely makes it out onto before his knees buckle. He hits his entire shoulder and side against a table, the only thing keeping him at all upright now. 

"Sehun, what's wrong?"

Jongin's voice sounds worried, on the edge of panic. He's followed Sehun out here. Sehun's eyes are shut tight so that he can't see Jongin's face or the way the floor is blurring and refusing to stand still.

"Are you sick? How much did you have to drink?" Jongin has crouched down in front of him to brush his hair away from his face. Sehun flinches away like he's been hit.

"Too much," he chokes. "I can't-"

Jongin makes soothing noises and reaches out to comfort him, but that's wrong because he _doesn't understand_ , doesn't know why Sehun's stomach is turning over in his gut.

"I have a boyfriend," Sehun says, and tries not to retch.

" _What?_ "

Jongin sounds faint. When Sehun manages to open his eyes, he sees the blood completely drained from Jongin's face. His hand is frozen an inch from Sehun's hair, the expression on his face just as sick and horrified as Sehun himself feels.

"Why didn't you say something?" Jongin sits down heavily, and when he covers his eyes, his hands are visibly shaking.

"I don't know," Sehun whispers. Then: "I'm scared he doesn't want me anymore."

"Because of this?"

Sehun shakes his head. "There's someone else he knows. Someone at work. He's always gone now, and I never get to see him."

The attention Jongin had paid him was intoxicating, and Sehun is ashamed to admit how starved for affection he is. Jongin blows out a long breath.

"Have you told him that?" he asks, then laughs weakly. "I can't believe I'm trying to give relationship advice to the guy I was hoping to take home tonight."

Another stab of guilt, along with maybe a twinge of embarrassment.

"I'm sorry," Sehun says.

"No, I'm sorrier," Jongin waves his hand like he's about to lay it on Sehun's arm before he thinks better of it. "If I had known, I would have never- I mean- There are some things you just don't _do_ and-"

He trails off helplessly. Neither of them look at each other.

"I guess I haven't," Sehun says. "Really told him that, I mean. There just... there hasn't been a good time."

"No time like the present." Sehun doesn't think his voice would be as steady as Jongin's is if he were the one in that position. 

The phone in Sehun's hand rings and rings. There are a number of reasons Kyungsoo might not be answering, all of them perfectly valid, ranging from "he's back home and asleep" to "he's still buried in work at the office," and Sehun really shouldn't be edging closer to panic with each ring, but he is. Jongin moves away, mouthing that he's going in search of water. It's an understatement to say that having him here for this conversation would be mortifying, yet at the same time Sehun isn't entirely sure he can do this without moral support. He's about to call out to Jongin to wait a second, when he hears Kyungsoo answer.

"Hello?"

Sehun clutches the phone with both hands. He opens his mouth before realizing he has no idea what to say. He has to tell Kyungsoo what's happened, he knows, but how can he even begin to explain his actions and then go on to say he's worried that Kyungsoo likes Junmyeon better than him? He can hear how hypocritical that is before he even says it.

"Hello?" 

"Kyungsoo?" Sehun manages, any further word dying in his throat when he hears another voice on the other end.

"Who is it?" The voice is close by, but indistinct.

"It's Sehun," Kyungsoo turns away from the phone for a moment. "Sehun? What's wrong?"

The other voice says something else, too muffled for Sehun to make out words, but clear enough that he can identify it. Which is fine. Kyungsoo's probably in a meeting to go over planning details. At... eleven thirty at night.

"Nothing's wrong," says Sehun. 

He feels very stupid. There's a pause and a rustle of movement before Kyungsoo speaks again.

"Where are you?"

"Out," Sehun keeps his voice neutral. "Is that Junmyeon?"

"We're working," says Kyungsoo. Is he speaking more quickly than usual? Does he sound just a little out of breath, or is this all Sehun's fevered imagination? He can't make sense of anything. It was a mistake to call.

"Don't let me distract you," Sehun's finger hovers over the 'end call' button. "Not that you ever do."

He says the words without thinking.  As soon as he shoves the phone into his pocket, Jongin is there to fill his empty hand with a glass of water, appearing at Sehun's elbow without a sound. Sehun stares into the glass.

"I think you're supposed to drink it," Jongin says eventually.

Jongin watches him until the water is gone, switching it out with another full cup before he clears his throat.

"So," he says. "He didn't take it well?"

"I didn't tell him," Sehun admits, which makes Jongin frown. "He was with Junmyeon."

"That's the other guy?" guesses Jongin, biting his lip when Sehun nods. "Okay, I know it sounds bad, but it might not be as bad as you think? I mean, they work together, right?"

"That's why I haven't said anything to begin with," Sehun's head just hurts now. "I mean, how do you say 'stop spending time with people you work with because I'm afraid you'll stop loving me' without sounding like a paranoid asshole?"

"Just like that?" Jongin suggests. "I don't know what else you _could_ say."

Sehun shakes his head and the two of them stand looking out over the edge of the open patio. Sehun knows he should be thinking the best of the situation, should be giving both Kyungsoo and Junmyeon the benefit of the doubt, but far too much time spent alone with his thoughts has left him with scenarios and mental images that just won't get out of his head. He hates the way he can't think of anything else, and he hates how the way Kyungsoo's been acting won't _let_ him think of anything else.  
When he finally turns to leave, Jongin stops him by pressing a piece of paper on him which Sehun tries to turn down once he realizes it's Jongin's phone number.

"Just take it, okay?" Jongin insists. "In case you just want someone to talk to or rant at. You don't have to call to chat or anything. Just. I'll listen if you need it."

He looks away. 

"And I promise I won't come on to you anymore or anything. I'm not that kind of guy."

Sehun's fingers slowly wrap around the paper. He slides it into his pocket with a mumbled "thanks," waving a quick goodbye before leaving without a glance back.

 

The heat weighs him down the entire way home, thunder beginning to rumble at the very edges of his hearing by the time he gets into the apartment complex. Sehun kicks off his shoes just inside the door. One of them hits the wall with a loud thump. The dark rubber leaves a mark that Kyungsoo will certainly complain about later and Sehun looks over his shoulder, half expecting to see Kyungsoo in the doorway with his arms crossed disapprovingly. The doorway is empty though. It's usually empty these days, Sehun thinks before he can stop himself. He wanders towards the living room to wait for Kyungsoo, even though he's not sure how he'll react when the time comes.

He's not given much time to decide either, since Kyungsoo is already home. He looks up from his phone as Sehun pauses in the doorway. It’s still not raining outside yet, but his hair is wet and sticking to his temples the same way it does when he steps out of the shower and forgets to completely towel dry.

"Where were you?" he asks.

"Not like you really have any right to ask that, do you?" Sehun leans against the frame and scowls.

Kyungsoo doesn't scowl but he doesn't meet Sehun's eyes either.

"I told you I was working," he says, turning his phone over and putting it in his pocket.

He still doesn't look when Sehun pushes off of the doorframe before sauntering across the living room floor, instead closing his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose like he has a headache. His eyes fly open, however, when Sehun drops into his lap and stares down at him, trying to find something concrete and reassuring in Kyungsoo's expression. The way Kyungsoo's eyes flicker back down to his lap, however, tells Sehun nothing. He looks for answers in the set of Kyungsoo's shoulders and in the hands he brings up to rest on his own hips. Sehun wraps his arms around Kyungsoo's neck and settles close against him, thinking that everything might just fix itself if only he could melt his way under Kyungsoo's skin and disappear. Then he remembers Jongin, the twisting guilt sitting in his mind like a dark blot. Even if Sehun were to melt and disappear, that stain would still be there under Sehun and Kyungsoo's shared skin.

There's a smudged bruise in the hollow of Kyungsoo's neck and Sehun rubs a thumb over it, pressing down sharply and hearing the sharp intake of breath. Kyungsoo's fingers twitch on his hips as Sehun leans down to run his lips over it. Neither of them say anything when Sehun stamps his own mark over the bruise, feeling something hot and uncomfortable and possessive churn in his stomach. Kyungsoo sighs almost inaudibly and hooks his fingers into Sehun's belt loops to pull him closer.  
They don't speak about any of it the next day or any of the days after.

 

The storm the next morning is the first of several in quick succession that keep Sehun occupied for several days. If Kyungsoo doesn't feel like he has anything to explain, Sehun is unwilling to press him on the topic. "An eye for an eye" is an unhealthy way of looking at it, he supposes. The longer he puts off bringing up his own indiscretion, the harder it will be in the end, but Sehun can't even think about it without accusing Kyungsoo at the same time, something he just can't bring himself to do out loud. Kyungsoo spends several days in a row working from the living room. Sehun spends hours painting on the balcony with the door shut, barely able to look Kyungsoo in the eye over the table at dinner while they eat. The way Kyungsoo easily curls into his arms at night makes Sehun feel like more of a traitor than ever.

When the rain dries up for a few days, leaving behind pleasantly cool weather and the palest of blue skies, Sehun has no excuse to avoid Kyungsoo any longer. Kyungsoo, for his part, seems to be making a point of spending more time at home now. All the attention that Sehun would have cut off his own right arm for a few days ago he now has in abundance, but it only makes him more uncomfortable. 

_Stupid Junmyeon,_ Sehun thinks grouchily when Kyungsoo brings him a cup of tea, settling into his side while he reads his Turner biography for the third time. _This would be perfect if he didn't exist._

Still, the awkward tension slowly fades to the back of Sehun's mind the more time Kyungsoo spends working at home. Even if they don't say anything directly, it feels to Sehun like they're each trying with their own small gestures to make it up to the other. Apology comes in the way Sehun rubs Kyungsoo's shoulders when he finds him hunched over his desk in the corner, and steeped in the coffee Kyungsoo leaves on the counter each morning. Things are better, but they're still not the same. A word carelessly spoken will ruffle Kyungsoo's composure in a way it's never done before, and a reference to Junmyeon made in tones just a little too warm sets Sehun's teeth grinding.

Now that the building project is nearing the end of the planning stages, Kyungsoo is engrossed in building model after model of not only the structure itself, but individual rooms that happen to require special attention. More often than not, Sehun sees him with paper and plaster sticking to his fingers and an anxious slant to his eyebrows. He knows from past experience that trying to be too helpful will only make Kyungsoo more frustrated, so he keeps his distance. The weather has stayed cool since the last rush of storms, so Sehun can spend hours sitting outside and sketching tiny drawings and speedpainting scenes he sees in the street below. He has almost all the cloud paintings he needs, but he still wants to keep a tight hold of his color-mixing instinct while he waits for one last storm.

Each successive model Kyungsoo makes is accompanied by a phone call to the office, where Junmyeon is sitting and the two of them hash out what details and updates to send to their client. He has a meeting every night to cover everything that can't be dealt with over the phone, but slowly these meetings start taking longer and longer and starting earlier and earlier, until he might as well just be working at the office all day. Kyungsoo's free time and attention is ebbing away again, something that Sehun is not happy to notice. Every single time things start to go right again and Sehun feels like he has a real place in Kyungsoo's heart, something snatches Kyungsoo away out of his reach again. Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder. Is that still true when it feels like the one you love barely has time to remember your existence?

 

Kyungsoo has a planner — a bound schedule book made haphazard with all the countless pieces of paper Kyungsoo keeps shoved and stored between the pages. Receipts, notes scribbled on napkins,  and bits of phone messages are held in with an elastic band around the gently curved cover. Sehun finds Kyungsoo sleeping facedown on this planner one day, slumped over his desk with his cheek pressed to the open pages. He's barely been home the last couple of days, and now Sehun feels bad for resenting the amount of time Kyungsoo's spent away. He shakes Kyungsoo's shoulder gently.

"Hey," he says, "You can't sleep on your desk. You'll do weird things to your back."

"My back is fine," Kyungsoo mumbles into the book.

"Yeah, but it won't be if you sleep in weird places. Go to bed."

When he half-hoists Kyungsoo out of his chair, despite sleepy protests, Sehun finds himself frowning at the page previously hidden by Kyungsoo's head. A three-day trip, the days blocked out with a pen line and the words "final presentation to investors." The trip is in four days. That explains a lot about Kyungsoo's recent coffee-fueled intensity, Sehun supposes, but this is still the first he's heard of any trip. He would have thought Kyungsoo would at least have mentioned it in passing. He looks down at the top of Kyungsoo's head, now resting against his shoulder.

"You're going away?"

"Don't be stupid." Kyungsoo's answer is muffled by Sehun's shirt. Sehun rolls his eyes.

"I mean, you're going on a trip?" he asks.

Kyungsoo groans, immediately going rigid with tension.

"Don't talk to me about the trip," he begs. "I can't think about that."

Sehun bites his tongue before he can ask if Junmyeon's going on this trip too.

"Come on," he says instead. "Go take a nap."

"Can't nap," Kyungsoo says, trying to make for his desk chair again. "Gotta work."

"No. You fell asleep on your papers," Sehun pins his arms to his sides and duckwalks him into the bedroom. 

Kyungsoo sinks into the blankets and back into unconsciousness without any further dissent. Sehun stands beside the bed, wondering why thinking about this trip is filling his stomach with lead. He determines to ask further about the trip later, but when Kyungsoo wakes up again, he seems to feel obliged to make up for lost time. The entire rest of the day passes without Sehun managing to bring up the topic again.

Sehun is out on the balcony the next day, trying and failing to paint a sky on the brink of storm completely from memory, when he sees Kyungsoo coming in from the front door with a massive box in his hands. He had been gone by the time Sehun had managed to peel himself out of bed that morning, so Sehun is surprised to see him back already. He wipes his hands hastily on a rag. If he can intercept Kyungsoo before he disappears again, maybe Sehun can actually get some answers about this trip. Sehun is in luck; Kyungsoo seems to have settled down to work here for a while, judging from the way he sets the box down on the table and spreads out his papers all around it until the glass tabletop is completely hidden.

Sehun moves to stand next to the table. He's not sure how to tactfully bring up the topic of "hey are you going on a not-really-vacation-but-long-trip-away-at-maybe-hotels with the guy I'm scared you're going to leave me for someday soon?" so he runs his clammy palms down the sides of his paint-stained shirt and purses his lips while he thinks. Kyungsoo just sits there until Sehun notices him looking, at which point he smiles warmly at Sehun.

"What's up?" he asks.

"You're working here today?" Dumb question, Sehun. Of course he is.

"Mmhm, we're getting close to a final design now, and Junmyeon's trying to pull together all the numbers for the presentation, so I thought I'd stay out of everyone's way."

Here's your chance, Sehun, go!

"You're going away in a couple days, right?" Sehun asks. 

"Yeah, just for a little while, though," Kyungsoo says. There's no reason for Sehun's mouth to be this dry.

"Is Junmyeon going?" There. He's said it.

Kyungsoo frowns, like he knows why Sehun's asking.

"Yes," he says. "Junmyeon is going."

"Does he have to go?"

"He's running the entire budget," says Kyungsoo, "So yes, he absolutely has to go. The presentation is mostly his, since he has to convince everyone that they should give us all the money we need to build this."

"Do _you_ have to go?" Sehun blurts. If it's Junmyeon's presentation, maybe he can convince Kyungsoo to stay here with him instead.

"I'm the architect," Kyungsoo explains. "They're definitely expecting me to go."

"Yeah, but..." Sehun scratches at his hair, probably leaving huge gray blotches in the pink. "If you're not the one who has to convince them, can't you stay here instead? I just. You know, I never get to be with you anymore."

He blinks down at the carpet when he finishes. Kyungsoo sighs.

"It would look bad if I didn't at least make an appearance," he says. "They want to see who's behind it all."

Sehun wants to protest further that he doesn't _care_ what a bunch of fat men in suits want, but there's no way to come off sounding anything other than petulant. Kyungsoo waits for a moment, then lifts the top of the box off to show a nearly completed model of the building before he picks up a sketchpad and makes a few more notes.

"I'm sorry, Sehun," he says, "I just have to go on this trip, okay?"

It's not really okay at all, but there doesn't seem to be any way to reply to that. Sehun looks at the model. It's a squat, dull box of a building, utterly generic, and with none of the beautiful idiosyncrasies Kyungsoo usually puts in his works. Sehun's not a musician by any stretch of the imagination, but if architecture is frozen music, then this building right here is an off-key kazoo.

"Where's it supposed to go?" Sehun asks, tilting his head as he tries to find any redeeming feature whatsoever.

Kyungsoo looks up from his notebook, eyes wide with confusion for a second.

"I'm not sure, really," he says finally, before going back to his plans. "The owner gave me dimensions, but he didn't say where the plot was exactly."

Another thing wrong. For all his past buildings, Kyungsoo has tailored each design according to its location and surroundings. "The light's different in each place," he always says, and each building, each structure is carefully customized to capture and use the natural light around it. This brick is made to sit anywhere. It could just as easily have been made by a first year student. Sehun frowns.

"It's ugly," he crosses his arms.

"Huh?"

"I wouldn't paint it if you paid me," Sehun wrinkles his nose.

Kyungsoo shrugs.

"I'm not really asking you to," he says, sounding amused as he crosses out one line and adds another.

Sehun stiffens, arms dropping to his sides as he stares at the top of Kyungsoo's head. He's always painted each of Kyungsoo's new buildings. It was how he'd begun painting buildings to begin with, their living room now dotted all over with the scattered timeline of his improvement. Kyungsoo seems to notice he's said something wrong, because he looks up suddenly.

"I didn't mean it like that," he says sharply. "I just mean-"

"No, it's okay, hyung," Sehun says, grabbing his hoodie and heading for the balcony. "I know what you meant. I'm busy anyway... with the clouds and stuff."

It's childish, he knows, to shut the balcony door a little harder than usual. He does it anyway.

 

Kyungsoo doesn't seem to budge in his decision, no matter how much Sehun argues and wheedles and bargains. Sehun could let it drop, but it feels like he's given too much ground already. Kyungsoo could go attend the meeting, come back, and everything could hang together for months afterwards, but there's some deep part of Sehun convinced that if Kyungsoo leaves on this trip, he leaves Sehun's grasp forever. There is a final red line drawn in Sehun's mind, in the calendar pages; a finish line that, once crossed over, will mark the end of the race for him. He doesn't know how to convey this to Kyungsoo, who refuses to acknowledge that there's any problem whatsoever. Kyungsoo is content to let things proceed the same way forever, never willing to cut someone out as completely as Sehun wishes he'd cut Junmyeon out. Sehun can't live that way. He needs Kyungsoo to make a decision, and time is running out until that decision is made _for_ him.

By the time the last day has arrived, Sehun is desperate. He follows Kyungsoo out of the bedroom that morning when he wanders out to the kitchen, silently shuffling after him while he pulls a slice of cold pizza out of the fridge for breakfast. Kyungsoo turns to look at him and his eyebrows crease together.

"What?" he asks around a mouthful of crust.

"Don't go," Sehun says.

The crease between Kyungsoo's brows gets deeper.

"I already told you, I have to."

"You said Junmyeon had to go," Sehun argues. "You never actually said you have to go."

"Well, I'm saying it now."

It's stupid to argue with Kyungsoo before he's had coffee, but Sehun doesn't have time to wait until he's had time for a leisurely cup. Kyungsoo is leaving _tomorrow_ unless Sehun can convince him to stay.

"If you're not the one giving the presentation, why do you have to go?" 

"If any of the board members have any questions about the building, they're going to want to talk to the architect," says Kyungsoo. 

"Why can't Junmyeon answer those questions?" Sehun presses. "He's been in the middle of it the entire time, hasn't he? Shouldn't he know all about it?"

"They're not going to want to talk to him, Sehun," Kyungsoo sounds frustrated. "They want to talk to the person with all the information."

"Are you saying Junmyeon doesn't know what he's doing?"

"I never said anything like that," Kyungsoo snaps. "Stop making this all about him."

"Maybe it is all about him," Sehun is just as frustrated as Kyungsoo sounds now. "I don't see why both of you have to go, except to keep each other company while you're staying away at some four star hotel."

"Sehun, this is stupid," and Kyungsoo is angry now, which only reinforces Sehun's gut feeling that he's onto something. "Maybe if you stopped flailing jealously at everything I say and actually stopped to think, you might realize that _maybe_ this is a completely stupid thing to be fighting about at all."

"So you're saying I'm stupid?" Sehun demands.

"No," Kyungsoo shoots back, "I'm saying you're being petty and childish."

They stand there and stare at each other for a moment, and the air in the room seems as thick as molasses. The words stick and hang in front of Sehun's eyes, almost visibly suspended in midair between them. Because that's the problem right there, isn't it? Sehun is childish; immature and years behind both Kyungsoo and Junmyeon in experience, constantly struggling to keep up. He knows he doesn't know things, and he is upsettingly aware of how dependent he is on Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo, who has been there through the years to guide and support Sehun, who has been the one to give him new eyes through which to view the world, who with every moment makes Sehun fall deeper in love with him until he can't bear the thought of living without him.

Which is why Sehun is perhaps more shaken by the words that come out of his mouth next than Kyungsoo is:

"If you leave with him tomorrow, don't expect me to be here when you get back." 

 

As soon as the restaurant opens, Sehun calls in to work to say he can't make it to his shift tonight, feigning sickness. It might say something insulting about his recent appearance and performance that his boss so readily accepts this excuse, telling him to take as much time as he needs to recover, but Sehun can't really bring himself to care. 

He replays the morning's conversation over and over again. Now that he's said it, Sehun thinks long and hard. He can't really say he didn't mean it, because when he turns it over and considers it, he finds that he's dead serious. That only begs the question of... is he really going to leave? Are either of them? Is Kyungsoo actually going to walk out that door tomorrow morning over all of Sehun's protests and pleas, and, if he does, will Sehun actually walk away from all this? Kyungsoo certainly hadn't seemed to think so. But the more Sehun thinks about it, the more distraught he is to realize that he has no idea what else he can do. He can try all he wants to push Kyungsoo into making a choice, but _something_ has to bring this to an end. Sehun will fight until the last possible moment to keep Kyungsoo, with every ounce of his strength and every fiber of his being, and yet... Sehun closes his eyes, breathing shakily. If Kyungsoo won't see that he needs him to choose, what else can Sehun do?

He had almost asked Kyungsoo to let him come along on the trip before thinking better of it, instead spending the day by himself making wild plans to follow Kyungsoo undercover to win back his attention and affection with lavish public surprises. These ideas are scrapped too, the bleak reality overtaking him and smothering him until he sits curled on one end of the sofa cushions with his eyes tightly shut. 

Kyungsoo spends most of that last day away at the main office to make preparations, his empty suitcase left sitting ominously on the bed. Sehun avoids the bedroom like the plague, finding that even just the sight of that suitcase fills his head with what feels and sounds like angry bees, until he has to leave the room entirely and sit quietly with his head between his knees for several minutes. He paces back and forth through the apartment, out of the open balcony door and back in, around the edge of the living room rug, through the kitchen and around the table, past the bedroom door as quickly as he can, and then back towards the balcony. All the windows and doors are left open to let in the cool air, but it's still stifling. The sun is hazy behind the thin clouds that have been gathering all day, but it's too bright. Nothing seems to fit right, including Sehun in his own skin, and he wonders if he can just start a tear in his scalp and keep peeling it away like the skin of a banana, step out of it, and become someone entirely new, someone who knows what to say and how to keep everything he ever loved from slipping out of his hands forever. 

The afternoon slips away after what feels like forever and also no time at all, the sound of a turning doorknob reaching Sehun's ears where they're lying near the foot of the armchair, along with Sehun's head and, nearby, the rest of Sehun. He's been lying on the floor for the better part of an hour now, after his legs finally gave out from constant nervous pacing. He feels like he's run a marathon. Every muscle in Sehun's body has been sent through a wringer, like his limbs are sacks full of lead ball bearings, incapable of supporting him. He turns his head when Kyungsoo's feet pad across the floor, hearing the soft creak as Kyungsoo settles into the seat next to him and reaches down to card his fingers through Sehun's hair. When Sehun leans into the touch, his eyes and nose burn and he blinks down at the carpet. 

"Did you eat already?" Kyungsoo asks.

Sehun shakes his head.

"Do you want to eat something?"

Another shake 'no'. Kyungsoo makes a small disapproving sound, but doesn't insist. He stands up instead, his fingers slipping out of Sehun's hair as he moves away into the bedroom. Sehun drags himself up using the chair and reluctantly follows him because no matter how much dread the sight of the waiting suitcase fills him with, the need to be near Kyungsoo is in irresistible pull. Kyungsoo is opening drawers to start packing, carefully picking up stacks of shirts, socks, and underwear like he's systematically lifting all traces of himself from Sehun's life. Sehun wants to dash the neat stacks from his hands and keep all of Kyungsoo's things permanently locked here in their home, like it will keep Kyungsoo himself locked up in Sehun's heart.

"You're really packing?" Sehun asks.

"Of course I'm packing," says Kyungsoo. "What else am I supposed to do? Live with one pair of socks for three days?"

"You should stay here," says Sehun, sitting on the bed and staring at the back of Kyungsoo's head as he slides the drawers shut. "All the socks are here."

He tries to keep his voice light, but it doesn't fool either of them. 

"What do you want from me?" Kyungsoo sighs.

He's still standing near the dresser with his back turned. Sehun can see the tired slump of his shoulders from here, and it makes him want to drop the entire subject and just pull Kyungsoo down onto the bed and kiss the tension from his forehead, but he grits his teeth and pushes ahead anyway.

"I want you to fight for us," he says.

Kyungsoo runs a hand through his hair. 

"You're acting like this is a war or something," he says. 

Sehun wants to point out that this _is_ a war between him and Junmyeon, and Kyungsoo is caught in the middle no matter how much he doesn't want to see it.

"If you go on this trip-" he says, "If you take this job, you're choosing him over me."

Kyungsoo turns to look at him, distressed.

"That's not true. Don't say things like that. It's just a job and I'm not choosing _anyone_ ," he says.

"That's even worse," says Sehun. He pulls his feet up onto the bed and wraps his arms around his knees, feeling his heart sink like a stone.  "That means I'm not worth picking."

Kyungsoo crosses the room in less time than it takes Sehun to close his eyes and rest his forehead on his knees.

He grabs Sehun's arm, holding it tightly. "You're always worth picking."

"Then _pick me_ ," Sehun pleads. Kyungsoo's mouth is a thin line as he looks away, but Sehun drags him back with a hand on his wrist. "Don't go tomorrow. Pick me."

When he smooths a thumb over his pulse and the curve of his wrist, Kyungsoo shivers and glances back at him.

"Going tomorrow doesn't mean I'm choosing him over you."

It's a statement, but Kyungsoo still sounds like he's asking as he pushes Sehun back down onto the mattress, and Sehun doesn't know how to explain that that's _exactly_ what leaving tomorrow means, so he lets him.

Kyungsoo kisses him with a certainty that Sehun clings to. He brings his hands to either side of Kyungsoo's face to hold him there, because he'll never be able to get enough of this. He heard a proverb once that kissing is like drinking salted water; the more you drink, the more your thirst grows. This is the best way Sehun can think to describe kissing Kyungsoo now. The weather is cooler than it has been in weeks, but Sehun is hot all over, still feeling the oppressive blanket of air covering his nose and mouth. They wrestle with shirts and buckles, and the only oxygen Sehun is getting is from Kyungsoo's warm breath in his mouth. When Kyungsoo lines their bodies up, pressing him down firmly, Sehun folds around him, molding exactly to his form. He pulls him as close as he can, even though it'll never be close enough, even though having Kyungsoo close now will make it hurt all the more when he leaves. The low moan that vibrates in Kyungsoo's chest makes Sehun lightheaded as all the blood in his body rushes to his groin. When he tries to arch up, Kyungsoo pins him down again, fingers digging into Sehun's hips hard enough to bruise.

_Good,_ thinks Sehun blearily. _Please, please, mark me up. Mark me as yours- I want that more than anything._

By the time Kyungsoo slips a slicked finger into him, Sehun's cock is already hard and leaking precome onto his stomach where it lies. It twitches sharply when Kyungsoo sucks on the side of his neck, leaving another trail of marks there as he slides a second finger in. By the time Kyungsoo reaches the third finger, Sehun is falling apart more than he ever has in the past, a garbled mixture of sobs and cries spilling from his mouth when Kyungsoo crooks his fingers at just the right spot.

"Kyungsoo- hyung, _please_ ," Sehun begs, trying to writhe in Kyungsoo's tight grip.

"Please what?" Kyungsoo prompts, somewhat breathlessly, still continuing his relentless assault. He brings his other hand to loosely encircle Sehun's dick, thumb barely brushing along the vein on the underside.

"Please touch me," pleads Sehun, ready to cry with want. "Please fuck me."

Kyungsoo's fingers tighten, sliding up to the head to run the base of his thumb along the slit, slicking the precome there down along the shaft until Sehun is trying to buck upwards into his grip. Kyungsoo gives it a few more teasing tugs before he pulls back completely, Sehun's ass clenching down on emptiness when Kyungsoo's fingers leave him. Sehun throws his head back and groans. By the time he turns his head enough to see, Kyungsoo has already grabbed the bottle of lube he'd dropped to the bed, covering his own erection as his hand moves in slow strokes. His lips look red and wet and thoroughly kissed, and they curve upwards at the needy whine that leaves Sehun's throat then. When he settles between Sehun's legs and presses slowly into him, his mouth swallows all the sounds Sehun makes. Sehun's long legs wrap around Kyungsoo, pulling him deeper in with each thrust as he moves to meet the motion of Kyungsoo's hips. His hands scrabble at the bedsheets, at Kyungsoo's back, at anything that can ground him and keep him held in some poor semblance of together. He's babbling something, but he can't tell if it's Kyungsoo's name, or "please", or "don't go." Sehun does know that when Kyungsoo reaches between them to stroke him to completion, the only word seared into his mind in a long, shuddering flash of white is "stay." 

When he finds he can breathe again, Kyungsoo has also stilled, lips brushing feathered kisses onto Sehun's jaw. Kyungsoo makes as if to move, to roll off of him onto the bed, but Sehun tenses his arms around Kyungsoo's shoulders and he silently takes the hint. He stays there, shifting only enough to slide out of Sehun and into a comfortable spot, and eventually they both drift away into sleep wrapped around each other.

 

When Sehun wakes the next morning to the sound of raindrops beating against the window, the bed is cold and Kyungsoo's suitcase is gone. There's a note on the kitchen counter.

_Sorry, I'll be tied up in meetings all trip. We can talk about it when I get back._

_-Kyungsoo_

Sehun stands holding the note in one hand and his phone in the other for a long moment before dialing quickly. Kyungsoo's phone goes straight to voicemail. The dim light from outside paints the apartment a cool, impersonal gray, the little shadows and reflections of the rain on the windows trickling across the floor in little races as Sehun hesitates in the doorway. It takes him another ten minutes to make a decision and some toast before he sits down at the kitchen table and scrolls through his contacts, looking for one uncalled number.

"Hello?" says a groggy voice.

"Jongin?" asks Sehun. "You said I could call you if I ever needed help."

He takes a deep breath.

"I need help now."

 

In the forty-five minutes it takes Jongin to borrow a friend's car and pull up in front of the apartment complex, Sehun manages to throw most of his things into boxes, bags, and suitcases. He takes his clothes, his paintings and supplies, and anything intensely personal to him — everything else he leaves to Kyungsoo to deal with. The lines between their belongings are too blurred anyway to say for certain what belongs to whom. He takes a moment to look at the mussed and tangled bedclothes before leaving them there untouched. Kyungsoo can face that when he comes back. His life takes them three trips to load into Jongin's car, and then they pull away.

The building they arrive in front of is an old three-story thing that looks like a row townhouse picked up out of the midst of its brethren and set down between two larger, hulking modern highrises, their sheets of reflective glass a contrast to the faded red brick and the olive trim around the roof and windows. When they step inside, it turns out that Jongin's place is the exact opposite of Kyungsoo's, and for a moment Sehun thinks he's walked into a thrift store instead of someone's home. The more Sehun looks around the room, the more odd objects he finds tucked into corners, his vision crowded like he's looking at a spot the differences picture. Nothing there looks like it belongs in a set with anything else. The overall effect is that of unified chaos. For Sehun, who has lived in a residence shared between two people with lives dedicated to meticulous design, it's an almost overwhelming level of visual information.

"Sorry about all the mess," Jongin apologizes. "The place belonged to my grandma before she died, and most of her stuff is still here."

"She left it to your family?" Sehun asks.

"She left it to _me_ actually," says Jongin, sheepishly pleased. "I own the place now. No rent required. 'S pretty sweet, considering a book shop clerk's paycheck."

"Wow." Sehun is impressed, even as his brain churns to make sense of the clutter and resolve it into paintable blocks and shapes.

"Yeah, I just never really moved any of the stuff out of here, especially on this floor." Jongin joins Sehun in looking around. "I don't know it feels like bits of her are still floating around here, like her ghost would appear and tell me not to track mud across the rug if I tried to mess with anything, you know?"

He leads Sehun to a staircase out in the hall, jerking his head upwards towards the second floor.

"I mostly just live up there," he says. "All my stuff is up there anyway."

On the second floor, Sehun can see a door cracked open to show a messy bedroom, a tiny bathroom with faded blue and white tiles, and one other room almost completely empty, save for a bare table and a single bed with an undressed mattress. Jongin brings him to this last room and gestures around at the empty space.

"You can stay here if you like," he says. "No one ever uses it, so you could stay as long as you like."

He leans closer with a conspiratorial look on his face.

"It's the room she died in," he confides.

Sehun must look disconcerted because Jongin immediately steps back and waves both his hands in denial.

"That was a lie," he says quickly. "I'm lying. She died in a hospital. It- I'm shutting up now."

Sehun nods slowly, still looking at him.

"Okay," he nods. "It sounds good to me."

A beat of silence.

"Thanks," Sehun adds. "For. You know. Letting me stay."

Jongin smiles.

"I haven't even shown you the best part," he says. "Come on."

They make their way up the second staircase out into large attic room. The entire floor space of the lower levels is left open under the slanting roof with its thick support beams. The room is lit entirely by the light streaming in from the windows at the front and back, one side showing the street and sidewalk, the other looking out into a small urban approximation of a backyard — largely paved with what looks like cobblestones, but with four large garden beds full of a generous mixture of flowers, herbs, and weeds.

"I think I've been up here about twice in my life," Jongin is saying, "But when I thought about it I realized that it's probably a great place to paint. I mean it's got a lot of room and windows all over so it gets plenty of light all the time. And it's pretty nice even in the summer if you've got a fan going, but I guess I should probably get a space heater if you wanted to paint in the winter or anything-"

He breaks off, embarrassed.

"I mean. I don't know how long you were planning to stay or anything. But it's not like it's crowded here, and there's no rent to pay. You can feel free to stay as long as you like."

Sehun realizes he should say something, but it occurs to him that he doesn't have any idea of how long he plans to stay either. He had run away with no real course of action planned beyond those first few steps of "get out", for which Jongin had so kindly volunteered his help. The thought of imposing longer than he has to makes Sehun uncomfortable, but it appears that he has a roof over his head at least while he figures out where to go from here.

"Thanks," he says, since an answer of some sort seems to be expected. "I don't know how long it'll take to find somewhere else, so thanks. It looks great."

Jongin gives him a pleased smile.

"Let's get all your stuff moved in then," he says, rubbing his hands together.

It takes them a few trips up and down to move all the bags in, and Sehun carries his painting supplies up into the attic at Jongin's insistence. It seems a good place to store all his finished paintings, his spare easels working as temporary holders for some of them, while Sehun props up the rest of them along the walls. He and Jongin stand in the center of the attic, staring around at the canvases lined up all around them. Jongin taps his lip thoughtfully. 

“You know,” he says, “I bet I’ve got better stuff for these downstairs than just leaving them all over the floor. Hang on, let me go take a look.”

He disappears down the stairs. Sehun is rooted to the spot, caged in by all the transplanted memories he’s brought with him, caught and pinned under layers of pigment, the last four years of his life inextricably mixed into each stroke.

Suddenly the lines twist into something unbearably ugly, the colors mottled and sloppy — the very sight of it makes Sehun feel angry and ill. He stands there in that attic, surrounded by what might as well be children's fingerpaintings covering the canvases he had been so proud of, and without thinking he grabs the bucket of paint thinner he uses to clean his brushes and splashes it all over the nearest painting. He claws and smears at it in rage until paint and turpentine run through his fingers, the red of the bricks making it look like handfuls of blood. He smudges the lines until there's nothing left but a morass of blurred colors before he turns to the next ugly canvas, kicking it over and watching it clatter to the floor. The thinner pouring down on it blends with the sound of the rain outside as it hits the canvas and splashes off into thick globules of color. The paintings arranged around the room start to run and sag off of their easels like Dali's clocks, while Sehun turns to the last man standing... "501 Main Street" sits there staring back at him, a mocking reminder. Sehun feels dizzy, but he's not sure if it's the fumes or the heavy drumming on the roof or his own failure. He raises his arm again to dash the acid in the face of the last of Kyungsoo's ghosts.

"What are you doing?"

A hand grabs his wrist. Sehun turns around to see Jongin holding him back, his other hand covering his mouth as his eyes water, coughing through the thick, chemical-filled air. Sehun looks around at the dripping paintings trailing their colors all across the floor.

"I wanted it gone," he says.

"You're so stupid," Jongin takes the dregs of the turpentine from him before moving to throw open all the windows. "An artist should know better than to work without ventilation. I thought you were supposed to know things."

Sehun laughs hollowly and sinks down to the floor.

"What have I ever done to make you think that?" he asks, and then shivers.

Jongin comes over to kneel next to him, holding something out. It's an old wooden picture frame, carved with cloud-like tufts and curved waves, with a faded brass plaque at the very bottom, on which the words were just visible, "FORSAN ET HÆC OLIM MEMINISSE IUVABIT."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sehun mutters, turning over the frame in his hands. Jongin sits back on his heels. 

"My grandma always said it meant something like 'someday we're going to look back at this and laugh'. It's an old quote, but I thought it might fit," He looks up at the surviving painting. "Even when the storms destroyed everything and he lost people he cared about, this sailor knew it was important to remember. I always liked that story."

"What story?" Sehun asks, the words on the frame blurring before his eyes.

The rain pours through the open windows and down Sehun's face. Jongin's arms creep around his shoulders and his voice is low and comforting as he tells the story of a ruined city, a headlong flight, and the rebirth of an empire. 

 

Sehun refuses to go up those stairs again for days afterwards. Kyungsoo calls after a while, Sehun assumes when he’s returned to the empty apartment, but he lets it ring. There are fifteen calls the first day. There are ten the next day, and three the day after that. Sehun doesn’t answer any of them, deleting the messages left without listening. He can’t stay away from work more than a day, for fear of losing his job, but he stays all but locked into his borrowed room at all other times, the curtains pulled over the window, and the covers pulled over his head. He knows he’s being stupid, but Sehun thinks that if he tried to walk out there and smile and live his life like before, he might just shatter, the edges of his mouth brittle and stiff when he tries to pull them upwards. It’s Jongin who pulls him out by force when he decides he’s had enough, claiming that he’s terrified Sehun will just stop breathing in there one day and Jongin will never know until he has to go clean up the gooey mess. Sehun wrinkles his nose at the image, and it’s the first expression he’s made since he arrived that feels real. He lets Jongin drag him down onto the first floor where Jongin appears to have started a massively ill-guided dusting project. Sehun sits on a rickety three-legged stool in the corner, dustcloth held in one hand while he watches Jongin take the lid off a tiny china box and blow into it, coughing at the cloud that emerges. Jongin pulls each box out of the massive wardrobes with one hand, convinced that every single one is full of vindictive mice, probably with rabies.

“I swear, I’m going to open one of these things and like fifteen mice are going to scatter all over the place,” Jongin groans, peeling back a box flap with two fingers. “One of these boxes is going to be filled with nothing but shriveled mice carcasses. This is the worst thing ever.”

Sehun is about to point out that this was all Jongin’s plan to begin with, but before he can open his mouth, Jongin lets out what he will later claim is most definitely not a shriek, and leaps back flailing at the moths suddenly flying all around his face. The laugh that leaves Sehun’s mouth surprises him, hand coming up to cover it as soon as he realizes. It feels wrong somehow to laugh right now, even at such an absurd scene, as if a few panicking insects are enough to fix the gash that’s been torn through his psyche. His eyes flicker up to see Jongin watching him, his own dustcloth now tossed over one shoulder.

“It’s okay to laugh, you know,” Jongin says. “Even if you’re sad. It’s just something people do.”

Sehun looks down at his lap where his hands are twisted together. He feels rather than sees Jongin come sit down next to him.

“It’s like at my grandma’s wake,” he says. “When my granddad got so drunk he started to sing some old song he learned in the army, and all that that implies. I mean, some of those verses were actually filthy, and the look on some of the old ladies faces- My mom started to laugh so hard she had to sit down, and then she burst into tears but she was still laughing.”

He sees the weird look Sehun is giving him and flushes red to the tips of his ears.

“I guess my point is that even when things are really bad, it’s still okay to laugh when something’s funny,” he finishes. “It doesn’t mean you’re any less sad, or that being sad doesn’t mean anything.”

“Are you like some kind of philosopher or something?” Sehun asks. “I mean you’ve got all this weird advice all the time.”

“No.” It’s Jongin’s turn to look at his lap now. “I just have a lot of time to think about things and then I say what I mean.”

Sehun picks up a painted figurine of a fisherman and stares into the jolly little black dots it has for eyes.

“It sounds like all I do is talk about my family,” Jongin sighs. “I swear I have actual friends. I’m not _completely_ lame.”

“Yes, you are,” Sehun says, feeling like he’s going to laugh again at the offended look Jongin gives him. “It’s okay, though. I think if it’s okay to laugh, it’s probably okay to be lame sometimes too.”

“I think it probably is,” Jongin says, and elbows Sehun off the stool.

 

Sehun makes a point of actually seeing the sun more over the next few days. Even though he still refuses to set foot up the attic stairs, he finds ways to occupy his time outside the restaurant, such as weeding all the garden beds behind Jongin’s building. He has no idea what plants are what, but the internet is an invaluable tool, since he can’t even tell the difference between mint and tree saplings. He does wish he had thought to look up poison ivy earlier, so that Jongin doesn’t have to make a late night expedition to the drug store in search of calamine lotion and rolls and rolls of cloth bandage, and so that he doesn’t have to show up to his next restaurant shift looking like a half-finished mummy.

Even without paints, Sehun still has plenty to do when he abandons his failed gardening project. He realizes his phone, among other things are still listed under the old address and under Kyungsoo’s name. Before he does anything else, that situation must be remedied. He stays on the line with the phone company for over an hour, trying to split his line off of the plan without changing his number, until he realizes there’s really no reason to keep the number at all. When he’s asked for a new address, he tries to give Jongin’s, but realizes he doesn’t even know it. Sehun tells the woman to hold on, and sprints out the door to look at the building number, and then further until he finds a street sign. He pushes past Jongin coming back in the door, and Jongin doubles over laughing when he finds out what Sehun’s mad dash had been about.

“You could just _ask_ me, you know,” he wheezes.

Sehun stares before flipping him off.

The fact is that Sehun is not good at asking for help. He’d been driven to it simply because he had nowhere else to go, but the idea that there is someone there to answer any question he might have is a foreign concept in his mind. Not unpleasant, he thinks, but unfamiliar.

 

Jongin comments eventually that Sehun’s roots are beginning to show. Or rather, he starts calling Sehun “Neapolitan”, explaining that his roots are the chocolate, the pink hair is strawberry, and his pasty pale nerd skin is the vanilla. While Sehun beats him viciously with his fists until he surrenders, he ponders over the fact that he’s still here. He certainly never intended to stay long enough for his roots to show, and yet he has yet to even start looking for another place to stay. With some reluctance, he starts pulling up browser tabs with apartment searches. He keeps them hidden, minimizing them the instant Jongin comes into the room, since the few times he’s been too slow Jongin has worked hard to mask the disappointment on his face. Nothing affordable in the area really opens up, so his searches become more half-hearted and infrequent as time goes on. Jongin really does seem more than happy to let Sehun stay as long as he wants, and Sehun’s things are slowly spreading out across the second floor, spilling down even a bit onto the first. The other day, Sehun had found his socks under the leg of an antique side table where they’d somehow been kicked, causing him to whisper an embarrassed apology to whatever disembodied spirit of Jongin’s grandmother might still be in that room. His things will become harder and harder to gather up and move on the longer he stays here, but Sehun can’t really muster the energy to care. As long as Jongin doesn’t mind, Sehun will just stay here a little longer.

He _does_ get fed up with his new nickname after a while though, so he ends up dragging Jongin out of the book store one afternoon to do something about it. Jongin belittles any suggestions Sehun raises of hair salons, instead leading them through the door of the same drug store where he’d gotten the poison ivy treatments and heading straight to the hair dye aisle. Sehun tries to dig his heels into the sidewalk, and Jongin all but has to pry his fingers off the doorjamb as they enter the store. Jongin claims that it’s ridiculous to spend entire paychecks on a one-time dye job that’ll have to be touched up in a month or so anyway. Sehun says it’s taking your hair into your own two hands without a professional there to gauge color balances and blending shades and what if he ends up with some kind of horrible eyesore on his head he would actually have to drown himself in Jongin’s grandmother’s bathtub. Jongin raises an eyebrow and says if he’s really that scared then sure they can go spend 40 hours’ worth of Sehun’s wages to get a human color wheel to stand over them. Sehun has always had control over the color he lets into his life, trusting only a select few people to advise or choose for him — even as a child insisting on a certain shade of green for his school backpack. When he thinks about it, though, the color he dyes his hair is a remarkably small thing to spend energy getting worked up over. Even if it turns out messy and painful, his hair will just grow out in time anyway, and his boss has yet to comment on the _pink_ hair. Still, Sehun refuses to just give in cheerfully. He looks dubiously at the rows of boxes, over at Jongin, and then back to the boxes.

“I have no idea how to dye my own hair,” he says flatly.

Jongin scoffs.

“It’s not hard,” he says. “I’ve had to do it before for friends. Actually, the hard part will be bleaching your roots enough without snapping your hair off completely.”

“That _happens_?” Sehun recoils. Jongin pats him on the shoulder consolingly.

“I’ve never had it happen,” Jongin says, in a soothing tone of voice. “I’m like eighty percent sure I can do it. Like eighty-nine percent sure. What about green?”

He picks up a bottle, ignoring the hands creeping towards his neck to throttle him.

“I hate green,” says Sehun, fingers twitching. “It would look terrible with the pink too.”

“Everything’s going to look terrible with the pink,” Jongin says reasonably. “We just have to pick the best color possible.”

“And you thought that would be _green_? Can’t I just do it all pink again?”

“Where’s your sense of adventure? How do you feel about orange?”

“Are you _trying_ to ruin my life?”

Sehun glares at the assorted colors.

“Let’s just do all of them,” he says.

“You mean like in streaks?” Jongin looks far too delighted at the prospect. “We can do that.”

They end up getting five different colors and Sehun is back with his head over the edge of the ancient bathtub before he can protest, the acrid bleach burning his nose for the second time in his life. This time is slightly less boring, and slightly more terrifying, since Jongin spends the entire time regaling him with tales of dye jobs gone horribly wrong. Apparently Jongin knows people who get bored with their hair color after five weeks, which has given him plenty of secondhand stories, if not personal experiences. By the time he’s finally standing in the shower, washing the dye out, Sehun has resigned himself to ending up with something resembling baby vomit on his head. Jongin stands just outside the curtain to hand him a ratty old towel when he’s done and to inspect the final product. When Sehun steps out with the towel wrapped tightly around him, Jongin’s eyes widen.

“It’s great,” he says, looking admiringly at Sehun’s hair. “It actually turned out really good. No, really, look.”

He grabs Sehun’s arm and drags him to face the mirror. The multiple colors now make Sehun resemble something like a toucan, he thinks, but the effect is not entirely unpleasant. He turns his head, noting how Jongin has blessedly managed to keep the colors from blending together into a muddy mess. It’s a good dye job, he has to admit.

“You look like a tropical bird,” Jongin grins.

His hand is still wrapped around Sehun’s arm, a fact that he belatedly seems to realize, jerking his hand back like he’s been burned. The knowledge seems to trickle over Jongin’s face that Sehun is still fresh out of the shower and wrapped in nothing but a towel. He backs quickly out of the bathroom with his face burning, amidst hasty mumbles about “clothes” and “see you after it’s dry”. The door closes and Sehun turns to a reflection that looks to be just as confused as he is.

 

Armed with a new hair color (or colors, technically), Sehun ventures back into the attic and back to his paints. Jongin has been back up to clean up all the paint and ruined canvases, so there’s no upsetting evidence left of Sehun’s previous breakdown. Sehun wonders vaguely what happened to all the destroyed paintings, but he finds that he doesn’t actually care all that much. His work on the clouds is intact, and this way it feels almost like a fresh start, like everything before his project has been cut off and thrown away along with the old canvases. He sets up his easel, covers the white of the stretched cotton with a layer of warm brown gray, and begins to paint.

Jongin comes up to see him occasionally when he’s not otherwise occupied. He knows absolutely nothing about painting, it turns out, and his questions often make Sehun stop to think about _why_ he’s doing what he’s doing. Jongin tells Sehun to kick him out if he’s being annoying, but Sehun finds his presence amusing and refreshing. He finishes the painting more quickly than any of the others, so he starts a new one almost right away. In between long stretches of time in front of the easel and shifts at the restaurant, Sehun takes to going on long walks. It’s a new area to get used to, and there’s no better way than on foot. He works his way through all the little shop windows on both sides of the street and through all the little restaurants, bringing back different take-out each night and critiquing it pretentiously, until Jongin gets rice caught in his sinuses from laughing so hard.

The range of “his territory”, as he begins to think of it, grows wider and wider. One warm morning, Sehun is standing at the counter of a bustling coffee shop when he catches sight of Kyungsoo again. He freezes, hands full of drink and half-unwrapped straw, and just gapes. He must be seeing things, must be hallucinating, but no. No, there he is, alive and in the flesh and just how Sehun remembers him. And yes, there’s Junmyeon too. He's wearing a simple black longsleeved shirt that Sehun recognizes as one of Kyungsoo's, and he looks more relaxed and natural here than Sehun had ever thought possible from that one time they'd met. Sehun watches them stand up from their table. He watches Junmyeon pick up his trash and bat Kyungsoo’s hands away before clearing up his too. He watches the way Kyungsoo’s eyes follow Junmyeon to the trashcan and back, and his vision tunnels around the way Junmyeon takes Kyungsoo’s elbow as they gather their things to leave.

They’re almost to the door when Junmyeon catches Sehun’s eye, gently turning Kyungsoo away so that he won't catch sight of him. Later, when Sehun has time to think over it, he'll be grateful, knowing that having to speak to Kyungsoo and pretend that everything was okay and that his heart wasn't being ground into a fine powder the entire time would have been more than he could have dealt with. Right now, though, it hurts. 

He watches Kyungsoo walk out the door with Junmyeon's arm around him. Kyungsoo turns just enough for Sehun to catch a glimpse of his profile, and the smile on his face is painfully familiar — the same one he used to give when Sehun would make an absurdly uninformed comment about some building. It's a smile full of indulgence and endearment that makes Sehun's eyes prickle so much, he has to turn away and stare into the cream carafes until he hears the chime of the bells on the door as it swings shut. 

 

People are jostling and reaching around him to fix their drinks, and Sehun knows he can't stay here. He blinks furiously as he stumbles from the building, his vision still too blurry to really see where he's going. He's three blocks away before he realizes he's left his drink sitting back there on the counter, but he can't go back for it because the overwhelming need to be _somewhere else_ is just too strong. Sehun doesn't know where he's going, just knows he has to keep moving away, not stopping to look back. He can't stop to think about Kyungsoo, about his smile, about the way he looked curled up against the sheets in the morning light. He can't think about the way he always sits too long with one leg tucked underneath him, so that he lets out a startled yelp when he finally stands up. The way he doesn't say anything when he sees Sehun getting frustrated with his work, but sits closer than usual, just his presence a show of support. Or the way he laughs with all his teeth showing when Sehun kicks him indignantly after a smart-ass comment about Sehun's favorite movie, and- when did he stop thinking about Kyungsoo? 

 

Sehun's mind reels when he realizes that he doesn't even know when the switch happened, but it's true. These are all things _Jongin_ does. Jongin's the one he targets his jokes to now, and Jongin's the one he first wants to run to and tell things. Sehun forces himself to think specifically of Kyungsoo, picturing him as clearly as he can, and it still hurts. He's still not healed from that, but when he thinks about Jongin and about how Jongin complains whenever Sehun comes to bother him at the bookstore, and yet can't hide the smile tugging the corners of his mouth... then Sehun thinks that he might be okay someday soon. His steps have led him to a building, and he looks up to see the open window with his easel there waiting, and he sees the new door sign he painted with an unflattering picture of Jongin and the words "beware of dog." Sehun knows that when he thinks about "home" now, this is what he sees. It's not perfect — not yet, and maybe not for a long while — but Sehun feels lighter than he has in months when he realizes that, for now, this is enough. This is all he needs.

 

The sky Sehun is painting is almost blue.

**Author's Note:**

> MASSIVE THANKS to Lucy, Tucker, and Min for helping me through mental breakdowns and screaming and crying, and generally for being awesome screaming pillows and betas. Special thanks to Tucker for letting me take over her house and roll around on the floor and write for hours on end while she plied me with endless mugs of tea and encouragement.
> 
> -This story was based off the prompts [uberchrome](http://uberchrome.livejournal.com/) gave me: Monolead's Almost Blue EP and the poem "A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention". The Almost Blue EP and rainymood.com were my soundtrack for this entire fic.  
> -The quote on the frame that Jongin gives Sehun is from the Aeneid (Book 1, line 203, to be precise). “Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit” basically translates to “Someday it may give us pleasure to remember even these things.” It's especially important, considering what he's just stopped Sehun from destroying, and that's why I chose to also use it for the title.  
> -I know nothing about painting and never painted with oils in my life. The last time I used acrylics was over a decade ago. So please forgive me for any horrific mistakes... I researched, but I wish I had some actual experience in the area. *sigh*///;


End file.
